


BloodThirst

by Russ (Quasar)



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Early Work, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-02
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:16:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 27,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasar/pseuds/Russ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick gets personally involved in the investigation of a series of murders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First posted in 1994.

The front door swung open halfway and jammed on a pile of letters. Dr. James Trevelyan bent to pick them up, frowning. "Doris," he said over his shoulder as he scooped an armful of mail onto the hall table, "I don't think that girl has been here at all."

"Are you sure, dear?" his wife quavered from the porch. "Professor Franklin spoke so well of her. Perhaps she just forgot to collect the mail."

Dr. Trevelyan snorted. "It was blocking the door! You just can't depend on young people these days." He advanced into the living room and looked quickly around. "Nothing's missing, at least. But she left the basement door open." He crossed to the door at the head of the basement stairs, and stood, frowning, at the threshhold.

"She must have left the refrigerator door open, too," Mrs. Trevelyan complained. "I can smell spoiled meat."

Dr. Trevelyan turned from away from the stairs. His face had turned pale. "That's not coming from the kitchen, Doris. And I don't think it's spoiled meat."

 

Nick Knight stood in the sheltered doorway of his garage and contemplated the wet streets. There was half an hour to go until sunset, but he was already technically late for his shift. He often tried to take a vacation around the summer solstice, but that still left him with a problem for most of June and July. The nights were simply too short in these northern summers. Half the vampires of Toronto had gone south for the season, and Nick knew of no vampires that summered in the more remote northern climes. Not only was it unpleasant, staying trapped withindoors for three quarters of the day or more, but it could also be dangerous; that had been proven in the vampire purges of Norway in the 1890's.

For Nick the problem was a little simpler. No one would look for a vampire in the Metro Police, homicide division, but he still had to find a way to get to work on time. Today, at least, it might be safe to leave home before sunset. Heavy thunderclouds blanketed the sky, and a curtain of rain made it still darker. More than half the photosensors on the streetlights had concluded that it was nighttime already. Still, Nick would have been happier if this had been a steady, day-long drizzle rather than a sudden storm. Thunderstorms could pass quickly, and he wouldn't care to be caught in heavy traffic if the clouds decided to part.

He squinted at the sky, checked his watch, and decided to chance it. His partner, Schanke -- currently on the day shift -- had left a message on Nick's machine saying that there was a new case for them. If Nick delayed too long in getting to work, he might miss a few essential clues.

As it turned out, his estimate of the risk was almost good enough -- or almost fatal, depending on perspective. He had just pulled his large blue Caddy into a space in the lot outside the precinct when the sun's last rays crept underneath the clouds and pierced him in the eye. Hissing, Nick ducked below the dash and fumbled around for his umbrella. He wormed his way out of the car and picked a path across the steaming parking lot with the umbrella held sideways to protect his face. He could feel the light on his legs even through his trousers, more scorching than his memories of the noonday sun of the Holy Land when he had still been mortal.

He paused once he reached the shadow of the building, and lowered the umbrella to look at the world around him. Even in reflection, the weak rays of the sunset stung his eyes and skin, but Nick braced himself against the discomfort and gazed on the newly washed city with a desperate nostalgia. Gradually the light reddened and dimmed until Nick's vampiric senses told him the last sliver of the sun had sunk below the horizon. He sighed as if the sword of Damocles had been lifted from over his head.

The good thing about the long northern summer days was that the twilights were also long. For nearly an hour after sunset and before sunrise, Nick could see the world in its daytime colors -- a sight he enjoyed all too rarely. That was the real reason he refused to migrate with the seasons, and one of many reasons why he wished to become mortal again.

With one last wistful glance at the darkening city, Nick went into the building. He found Schanke waiting by their desks in the squadroom. "Hey, partner, what took you so long? Myra's ready to skin me if I'm late for dinner one more time."

"Sorry, Schank," said Nick. "I had a hard day at the beach."

Schanke chuckled, always appreciative of jokes about the "skin condition" that kept Nick permanently on the night shift. Then he frowned. "You do look a little red."

Nick lifted a hand to his face, thinking it was lucky he just looked red instead of black. "Well, I was a little careless. Your message said we had a new case. Anything interesting?"

Fortunately for Nick, Schanke was easy to distract. "Could be. Looks like an accident at first glance, but the employers insist it couldn't be." He passed Nick a handful of reports. "Deceased is Tammy Parkinson, 20 years old, college student. She was housesitting for a couple named Trevelyan while they were on vacation. They came home to find her dead in the basement, trapped underneath their old boiler, which had fallen down. Big house, big water heater, I guess." He shrugged.

"But it's not an accident, you said? Did somebody rig the boiler to fall on her?"

"Well, it does look like the screws holding it to the wall were loosened -- they didn't just rip out. But the real reason I don't think it's an accident is the neighbors never heard anything."

"So -- maybe the boiler fell at night." Nick took the position of devil's advocate without thinking. Usually Schanke played the skeptic against Nick's hunches, but that might come later when Nick was better acquainted with the case.

"Condition of the body says she died just a couple days ago. But none of the neighbors have seen her for over a week. Nine days of mail piled up when the owners came home. So if she was stuck under the boiler that long, how come nobody heard her yelling?"

"She was in the basement. A big house, you said. Is it on a separate plot?"

"Yeah, but there is a casement window not far from where the boiler fell. And one of the neighbors is a nosy old lady whose garden runs between the houses, only a couple feet from that window. And the postman was on the porch every day."

"What's your theory, then, Schanke? Somebody kidnapped her, held her for a week without anybody knowing about it, never sent out a ransom demand, then killed her and tried to make it look like an accident? Why not just dump the body in the lake, or the woods or something? That's what half the other killers in the city do."

"Hey, you never know with these psychos!"

"I don't know, Schanke, it seems to me she could have died when the accident happened. Was the basement cold?"

"Not cold enough to keep a body fresh in high summer, I can tell you that." Schanke shook his head emphatically.

"But cold enough to slow things down a little?"

"She was missing for nine days!"

"So, maybe she neglects the housesitting for three days, then the accident happens, she dies in, say, 24 hours, before anybody has a chance to hear her, the body decomposes slowly -- five days later it looks like she's been dead three days."

"Uh-huh. And when she decides it's time to stop neglecting the house, how come she goes straight down to the basement without picking up the mail first?"

Nick threw up his hands. "I give. We'll investigate. I'll talk to some of the witnesses -- you didn't get in touch with these friends, yet?" He pointed at a list of names on the top sheet.

"No, I guess they were in their summer classes or something. And while you're checking it out, you can stop by our favorite coroner's office and ask about time and cause of death. She should have finished the autopsy by now."

Nick grinned. "Thanks, Schanke."

"Hey, I was just saving myself the trouble. I knew you'd make an excuse to go over there anyhow. 'Was the basement cold?'" he mimicked under his breath as he moved away. "Have a good night, pardner -- I'm off to Myra's fettucine in garlic sauce!"

Nick winced.


	2. Chapter 2

It was nearly full night as Nick arrived at the Coroner's offices. The combined odor of antiseptics, formaldehyde, and decaying flesh was painful to his vampire's senses, but so familiar that Nick scarcely took note. He could tell, however, that a body had come through today that was more than usually ripe.

He entered the lab to find Natalie Lambert bent over a worktable. A chemistry set worthy of a mad scientist was laid out before her, and she was scribbling intently in a notebook. Nick hesitated over an impulse to sneak up and tickle her. Was that a vampiric urge? A hunter's stalking instinct? Yet he had seen mortals play such tricks, too.

While he delayed, Natalie turned her head and caught sight of him. "Nick!" she exclaimed happily, unconscious of his self-doubts. "I was hoping you'd stop by."

Nick smiled back at her. "Schanke said you might have finished the autopsy from this afternoon?"

"Yep! All done. I think you'll find the results interesting, too. But first, let me show you something." She handed him a test tube with something red inside.

Nick knew what it was even before he brought it to his nose. "Blood," he said. "Anyone I know?"

"Could be." Natalie watched his reactions carefully.

Nick sniffed more carefully. It was human blood -- he thought it was probably Natalie's, but he couldn't be sure since he had never tasted her blood. Yet there was something . . . Nick dipped a finger and brought it to his lips.

"Hey!"

"One taste won't do me any harm," Nick said.

"You never know. But you just contaminated that sample."

"Sorry." Nick licked his finger and felt his fangs throb unexpectedly. "Who did you get this blood from?" he demanded, his voice gone wild and hoarse. He knew that his eyes were beginning to change color.

"Don't break the test tube!" Natalite warned as his fists clenched.

"Whose blood is it?"

"It's mine!" Natalie took the sample away from him.

Nick's teeth and vision were returning to normal, but he was annoyed. "That came from a vampire -- someone closely related to me. Who was it?"

"You could tell that from the taste?" said Natalie, impressed. "All right, all right!" She patted the air to restrain his impatience. "It was my blood, but I infected it with some virus I isolated from you -- the same virus that makes you a vampire."

Nick's eyes widened. "You isolated it?"

Natalie nodded. "Now look at this sample. This one was much harder to make." She handed him another test tube. "Don't taste this one. It could be bad for you."

This time it was very fresh, and not vampiric. "It's yours, I can tell that," said Nick slowly. "Seems normal to me. What's special about it?"

"I added the virus again -- but this time it was dead virus. And that was the hard part. The virus tends to decay very quickly when it's killed. My first seventeen attempts got me a test tube full of ash. Now, here's the best part." She held up both test tubes. "I add the infected blood to the whole blood with the dead virus," she said, suiting the action to the words, "and -- voila!" A curl of smoke went up from the test tube, the blood bubbled briefly, and Natalie had a test tube of blood with a fine layer of ash floating at the top. "That," she said with satisfaction, "is why I didn't want you to taste it. The infected blood has been destroyed -- or rather, the virus in it was destroyed, and it killed the cells as well."

Nick swallowed at the thought of what that sample might have done to him. "Wait a minute -- are you saying you've found a . . . "

"A vaccine for vampirism. Not quite so great as a cure, but it's a start."

"Would it really work as a vaccine?"

Natalie laughed grimly. "Am I supposed to apply for funding for a large-scale clinical trial of a vampire vaccine? What kind of questionnaires would I give the participants? 'Have you ever found strange puncture wounds on your neck?' Or should I just inject myself and then have you bite me?"

"That isn't funny, Nat."

"Don't worry, I wouldn't. Those seventeen burnt samples were very sobering. But maybe this way I can get a better understanding of the virus."

"Natalie, that's -- that's amazing. But you will be careful, will you? We don't really know what we're dealing with here." The smell of burnt blood and the smell of Natalie's blood in a vampiric state were equally distressing in his memory.

"Speak for yourself. I intend to find out exactly what I'm dealing with. But I will be careful. I'll experiment on you instead of me -- you're much harder to kill." She grinned.

Nick found it hard to grin back, as he realized that Natalie's discovery could also apply as a potent poison against vampires. It might even be fatal, in large quantities. He knew well enough that Natalie would never break her doctor's oath by using her skills to harm, but if any other vampires ever learned what she was about, Natalie herself might be in danger. But Natalie rarely paid heed to hypothetical dangers, and warning her might be treading close to the boundaries of the vampires' Code. Nick ran a hand through his hair in frustration and changed the subject. "What about that body, then? Schanke doesn't think it's an accident."

"Oh, it definitely wasn't an accident." Natalie set her samples aside and crossed to her desk to get the autopsy report. "She didn't die under that boiler. The body was placed there after death. Not more than two or three hours after death, judging from the extent of the bruising the boiler made."

"How long ago did she die? Schanke said the basement was cold."

"Not that cold -- it was over fifteen degrees. It would have delayed the decomposition a little, but not much. I'd say the death was sometime late Monday or early Tuesday. Two days before she was discovered."

"And the cause of death?" Nick craned over at the report.

"Dehydration," said Natalie flatly.

Nick pulled back to stare at her. "She died of thirst?"

"Uh-huh. That's probably why the killer figured he could make it look like she died trapped under the boiler."

"But you're absolutely sure it didn't happen that way."

"No doubt about it. Look -- three ribs were broken by the fall of the boiler, but they're obviously posthumous injuries. Hardly any bleeding, no clotting. If that had happened when she first went missing, the ribs would have started healing already. And dehydration is a fairly messy way to die, but she didn't leave any signs in that basement -- despite the lack of toilet facilities."

Nick grimaced. "So she was killed somewhere else. Or at least she died somewhere else. Thirst is a pretty strange murder weapon."

"It was deliberate. Clear marks of restraint on the wrists and ankles. Handcuffs, I think. It would have taken her four to six days to die, depending on the temperature where she was confined. This wasn't just accidental neglect on the part of a kidnapper."

Nick tapped the report against the knuckles of his free hand, as though that would knock further information out of it. "Was she gagged?"

"Not that I could see."

"So the killer either had good soundproofing or a very private location."

Natalie nodded. "This guy's really sick, Nick. He must have planned it all carefully."

"And he moved her immediately after she died. He had to have been watching her closely the whole time."

Natalie frowned. "You know, that reminds me of something . . . not our case, but something I read a year or two ago."

"I don't recall anything similar. The closest would be that diabetic man who was tied up in his hotel room and died of insulin shock."

"No, that was totally different, just a robbery that went wrong."

"It wasn't a robbery. This didn't get into the newspapers, but I remember the reports. Nothing had been stolen, and there was evidence -- cigarette butts or something -- to indicate someone waited and watched while the man was dying."

Natalie's eyes widened. "I didn't know about that. Maybe there is a connection after all."

"With Tammy Parkinson dying of thirst?"

"Yeah, while someone stood around and watched her."

"It's a completely different method, different victims. If you're talking about some psychotic serial killer, it should be someone with a favorite method and particular targets. These two just don't fit together."

"But it's the same sick thrill, watching someone die slowly of deprivation. Maybe our killer didn't have access to his very private location a year ago. Maybe he had to target someone he knew would die quickly."

"Or maybe it was a completely different person. The RCMP thought the diabetic man was an organized crime case -- stylized revenge killing. Nothing to do with our Tammy."

Natalie shrugged. "Yeah, you could be right. If I could just remember what this case reminded me of . . . no, it's gone now. Maybe it'll come back to me later."

"Good luck. I should go interview some of this woman's friends. Thanks for the info."

"Sure. I hope you find the guy that did this."


	3. Chapter 3

Less than an hour later, Nick sat in a cramped, cluttered apartment filled with mismatched furniture. A stack of textbooks and papers had been pushed over to one side of the couch so that he could have a seat. Across the room, two kids faced him, a boy in a dilapidated armchair and a girl perched on a coffee table that hardly seemed sturby enough to support her.

Nick knew that they were legally adults, but to his eight- hundred-year-old vision they seemed like mere infants. The hurt and bewilderment on their faces only strengthened the impression of youth. They were stunned by the confirmation that Tammy's death was murder, although Nick had spared them the details of the case.

"So, you two are Tammy Parkinson's rommates?"

The young man -- Dave Maples, according to Schanke's hieroglyphics -- nodded his head.

"How long have you known her?"

Dave cleared his throat. "I shared apartments with her for the past two years. Angie here moved in with us just this summer."

There was a congruity of look and movement between Dave and Angie that suggested they were an item, so Nick tried to phrase his next question carefully. "And how well did you know her? Were you close?"

"Well, yeah." Dave cast an apologetic glance at Angie. "We dated, her and me, a few times. But it was never really serious. I don't think she wanted it to be serious."

"Tammy was afraid of commitment," said Angie matter-of-factly.

"Is that why she took up house-sitting for a few weeks this summer?"

"No."

"Yes," said Angie.

"Well, sort of," Dave conceded. "She wasn't jealous of Angie, or anything . . . "

"But I guess she was just as much bothered by commitment even when it was between me and Dave. She felt like she needed to get out of the apartment, she heard about this couple who needed a house- sitter, and she took them up on it."

Nick waited to see if Dave had anything to add, but it looked as if the boy was simply going to sit and blame himself silently for Tammy's death. "But you all have other jobs this summer?"

"Angie does. She's doing research for one of the psych professors at the college. I'm taking summer classes -- I failed organic chemistry this spring, and if I want to finish my major I have to retake it."

"And Tammy?"

"She was taking orgo too, but she works -- worked -- four nights a week at the pizzeria. She would have passed orgo the first time if she didn't have to work. She has a scholarship, but it doesn't cover all the expenses. The housesitting was gonna help." He scuffed his dilapidated shoes nervously along the edge of the equally worn carpet.

"Her parents don't help out?"

Dave shrugged. Angie watched him worriedly.

Nick frowned down at Schanke's notes. "We haven't been able to reach her family -- the contact information she gave the college seems to be outdated. Can you give us a more recent number?"

Dave shook his head. "She didn't talk about her family."

"Not ever?"

Dave's mouth was pinched shut. Angie took up the thread. "Never in specifics. I got the impression she wasn't very happy with her family -- a lot of unresolved issues."

"You're a psychology major?"

Angie nodded self-consciously.

Nick smiled faintly as he made a note. "What about the others?"

"Dave's biology. Tammy was pre-med."

Pre-med. The girl who had been so chillingly murdered had been studying to heal people. "You don't have any numbers or addresses where we might reach her family? No? What about this scholarship? Is it from a society? They'd have to know something about her background."

"She won it," said Dave distantly. "An essay contest. They didn't need to know anything about background."

Nick was beginning to get a picture here. "Do you think Tammy was trying to hide something about her background? Her family?"

Dave made a sharp cutting-off gesture and turned his head away.

"She wasn't trying to hide anything," Angie said. "Escape, maybe. But not hide."

"Escape from family troubles? How serious?"

"What difference does it make now?" Dave spat. "She's dead. Gone. Escaped for good."

Nick sighed. "Look, if she had disagreements serious enough that she tried to hide her background and cut off all contact with her family, it might be connected to her death."

"Surely, it couldn't be a motive for murder?" Angie protested.

"Maybe, maybe not. Anything you can tell us will help. Names, phone numbers?"

"Nothing!" Dave shouted. "She never told us anything, OK? I tried asking her sometimes, and she'd just -- shut down. I don't know her father's name, or if she had brothers or sisters, or anything. I just don't know!" He dropped his head into his hands. Angie put a hand on his shoulder.

Why 'father's name'? Nick wondered. What about her mother? But it was clear that he wouldn't get anything else out of Dave tonight. He rose to his feet. "Mr. Maples, I'm very sorry that this interview has upset you. Murder is a terrible thing. I'm not trying to make matters any worse. I assure you, all I want is to bring her killer to justice. Here's my card. Call me if you think of anything else. I work night shift, so you won't have to skip classes if you have anything more to tell me. Or you can leave a message on my machine at any time." He gave the card to Angie, with a firm smile. From what he had seen of the relationship between them, Angie would soon bring Dave around to admitting everything he knew.

If he knew anything, that was. And even if he did, it might be of no use.

 

It was too late to speak to any other possible witnesses -- questioning them would be Schanke's job -- but on the way back to the station Nick stopped by the Trevelyans' house, where the girl had been found. He made a slow circuit of the house, noting that one of the neighboring houses had a clear view of the porch and yard, while the other was blocked by trees. He didn't mount the porch steps, but even from the yard he could smell the fingerprint powder that had been used on the door handle and locks. That would probably only turn up the fingerprints of Tammy and the Trevelyans, but it was worth a try.

As he passed around the side of the house, Nick paused as another whiff of fingerprint powder came to his nose. A narrow patch of dirt between the house and the drive had been marked off-limits with little stakes and strips of yellow ribbon, and in the center of this stretch was the little casement window. It would be a tight fit for an adult, and not a good way to bring a dead body into the house, but some responsible soul had dusted the latch anyway. From where he stood in the drive, Nick could hear the slow breaths and heartbeats of two people sleeping upstairs, and the purring of some machinery in the basement -- perhaps a new, modern water heater. If he could pick that up from here, mortal ears should certainly have heard any strange noises from the basement, if anyone had been around at the time.

A fluttering ribbon drew his attention to a footprint in the dirt, protected from the recent rain by the overhang of the eaves. He knelt to study it, his eyes picking out the details easily through the gloom. It came from a large, worn, rubber-soled athletic shoe; not the sort of thing the Trevelyans, from their description, would be expected to wear. Nor, he supposed, would the old lady who lived next door, but he crossed the drive to examine the neighbor's garden for comparison. The tiny shoeprints he found in the soil there were very different.

Nick returned to his Caddy thinking about this clue, and about what he had learned and guessed from Dave Maples. Tammy had broken off contact with her family, concealed her past, perhaps even changed her name. Yet someone had come to her while she was alone in this house; someone had taken her away and coldly watched her die. Had it been someone from her family?

It seemed plausible to Nick. He knew all too much about the difficulties of escaping from one's past.

 

Nick urged his sturdy little mount along the dirt track he followed, resisting the urge to look behind him. No doubt LaCroix had tracked him easily enough to Plymouth, but even if he had found out what ship Nick had taken, he would not be expecting him to get off in Ireland. He would assume Nick had continued on to the Americas, and pursue him there. Nick, meanwhile, was riding hastily to the opposite side of the emerald island. Once he reached the coast of Clare, he would take sail again, but eastward, not westward. He would find himself a hiding place in Belgium, perhaps, or further east, and live quietly without interference from his master.

Nick brushed the wet hair from his brow and squinted through the drizzle. There was a good chance he could reach the coast before sunrise -- the little Irish horse he had bought was surprisingly swift -- but he must find a place to feed before then. He would not have time to find anyone who deserved killing, but there would be a sleeping innocent somewhere that he could feed from and leave alive but forgetful.

He stayed on the rutted track until it took him near a tiny sod-roofed farmhouse, where he dismounted and approached slowly on foot. He could hear sounds of movement and life within, but something felt wrong; there was a sickly sweet odor in the air that he could not quite name.

He ghosted silently through the drifting mizzle until he reached the door of the little building. It stood open. Puzzled, Nick stepped within. Here the smell was stronger, and he could identify it now: death. Death, and decay. A woman sat slumped over a table in the middle of the room. Nick's nose and ears told him clearly that she was dead.

There was a scuffling from the door on the far side of the room, and a child of six or so appeared. She -- as Nick guessed from her dress; it was impossible to tell from face or body -- looked up gravely from a pinched and sunken face. "Have you come to wake up my Mama?" she asked.


	4. Chapter 4

Nick forebore to mention his speculations about the footprint in the notes he left for Schanke, but he included several questions for Schanke to ask the Trevelyans and their neighbors, and made a note to ask forensics about the age of the footprint. Then he went home before his shift was supposed to be over, because he had to beat the early sunrise.

The next day the skies were clear, and Nick couldn't make it in until after 9:00. To his surprise, Schanke didn't complain. He was too busy reading several pages of fax output, with Natalie Lambert peering over his shoulder.

"Transcripts of the tap on the mayor's phone?" Nick asked mildly as he approached.

Both of them jumped.

"The mayor's phone is tapped?" Schanke exclaimed.

"How would I know?" said Nick. "What's so special about what you're reading?"

"Oh, well, Natalie told me about this theory you had -- about how the Parkinson case was connected to the diabetic man last year --"

"That wasn't my theory," Nick protested. "Natalie came up with it."

"It was your idea first," said Natalie generously. "And I think you may have been right."

"Oh, come on, Schanke, you can't be buying a serial killer with no set method or preferred victims?"

"But there is a method!" Schanke protested.

"Look, I just found out last night there was a personal motive for Tammy's murder. She had serious disagreements with her family. Always look close to home, right?"

"Yeah, but not when the murder fits nicely into a string of unexplained killings," said Natalie. "Here, you look at the report."

Nick picked it up and froze at the first grainy photo on the stack. It showed four bodies in a heap, partially covered by leaves, all in different stages of decomposition. The most recent body had reasonably intact flesh, but was horribly emaciated.

Natlie gestured at the paper. "Remember how Tammy's case reminded me of something? Well, it came to me last night, and Schanke got them to fax some of the reports to us."

Nick flipped to the written summary. "Starvation?" he said disbelievingly.

"One unknown cause, two starvation, and one -- scurvy," Natalie told him.

"Scurvy? That's a vitamin deficiency, isn't it?"

"Vitamin C deficiency."

"But wouldn't that take months to be fatal?"

"More like a year, depending on circumstances. Death is actually from complications like infection or viruses. Could take longer than a year. And starvation can take a couple of months too."

Nick noted the location where the bodies had been found: the more remote woodlands of British Columbia. "Campers, caught in a snowstorm?" he suggested. But he could see that the bodies were all of different ages. The oldest of the four was a clean-picked skeleton. The report was over three years old, from just before he had joined the Metro Police.

"Uh-uh," said Natalie with a shake of the head. "They were all unsolved missing persons cases. One of them disappeared from her home. Two of them show clear signs of restraint. The man with scurvy broke his wrists repeatedly while attempting to escape."

"What we got here," said Schanke, jabbing at the report, "is a clear precedent for murder through different kinds of deprivation. Four bodies of different ages, hidden in the same place, similar marks on the bodies -- you can't tell me these aren't related to each other."

The more Nick read of the report, the more sickened he was. "But this is from the other side of the country. Why would our killer move to Toronto?"

"Could be anything. Work, family -- all the reasons a normal person would move. The point is, when this sicko moved to a big city, he couldn't find a place to keep people locked up for months on end while they starved. He had to change his method."

"Dehydration and insulin shock," Natalie summed up.

Nick hardly heard their words. He was staring at the photo of the bodies. He had seen the effects of hunger before.

 

Nick stared appalled at the child who had come through the doorway. Her mother must have been dead at least a day. Didn't she know?

"Please talk to Mama. The baby won't wake up and I don't know what to do."

Nick looked more closely at the body of the dead woman. She was skeletally thin. He hadn't noticed at first, since she was covered with a lumpy shawl, but the bones of her face stood out as if they would push through the skin, and her hands were like so many sticks wrapped in thin fabric.

The child had come closer to Nick and was watching him anxiously. He could hear her heartbeat and the rush of blood through her veins, but he pushed that awareness aside. This child could not spare him any of her blood.

"Have you got any food?" the little girl asked.

"No, I -- I'm sorry, I'm not carrying any," said Nick uncomfortably. "When did you last eat?"

The girl hardly seemed to understand the question. "We have no food," she said. "The potatoes is blighted."

Nick frowned. "But the fields I passed were full of grain, beans -- all kinds of food."

"We have no food," the girl repeated. Then, growing tired and apathetic after her burst of curiosity, she went back through the door she had appeared through.

Nick followed. In the dark, he could pick out the girl settling herself on a straw pallet in the corner of the room. Somebody had been chewing on the straw. In the corner stood a cradle; Nick remembered that the girl had mentioned a baby. He looked inside to see a tiny, lifeless form, outsized head and shrunken, skeletal limbs.

Someone stirred in the opposite corner. A young boy, a few years older than the girl, turned his head. One of his hands moved, but he seemed to lack the energy to lift it.

Nick knelt by the pallet. "How long have you been alone here?" he asked.

The boy blinked slowly. "A few days. Mother's dead, isn't she? I tried to get up and help her."

Nick swallowed. "She -- she doesn't need your help any longer."

"The potatoes have been bad for two years running. There's nothing to eat, and no money to buy food. When we got some beans or broth, Mother gave it to me and Mary."

"But the fields are full of food! What matter if the potatoes are blighted?"

The boy shook his head slowly, back and forth. "That's not for the likes of us. Father was hanged for stealing grain, and John was transported. He died on the ship."

A red fury was beginning to boil within Nick. "Who's responsible for this? Your lord has a duty to his people."

"Landlord's never here," said the boy faintly. "He lives in England. He leaves his bailiff to do the dirty work, keeping us out of the crops and stealing our houses when we can't pay the rent."

"This bailiff -- where does he live?"

"In the manor," said the boy, his voice growing weaker. "Three mile down the road." He closed his eyes and faded into sleep.

Nick stood up, trembling with anger. He turned to the little girl, who was watching him with enormous eyes from beneath her coverlet. "I have to go now," he said, "but I'll be back. I promise. And I'll bring you some food."

 

"Nick?" said Schanke. "Hey, Knight, you with us?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, I was just thinking." Nick set down the picture of the tumbled bodies.

Natalie met his eyes sympathetically. "Well, folks, it's time for me to go. I hope you catch that killer." She punched Nick's shoulder gently, hoisted her purse, and left the squadroom.

"So, whaddya think?" said Schanke.

Nick was still distracted by his memories. "About what?"

"About the killings! Is the Parkinson case related or what?"

"Well, I admit you have a point here," said Nick. "But I have some leads that say Tammy's murder was personal -- not some paranoid schizophrenic picking the most convenient victim. She was on the run from her family. Her roommate's reaction tells me she was scared of something. I'm going to talk to him again tonight. Did you get anything new on her background?"

"Nope. She gave false information to the college and her employers. Her IDs were faked. I think I know where she got them, too; we closed that business down a couple years ago."

"She entered the college two years ago, right?"

"Just about. But she was in town a year before that. That was when she got the IDs and won that scholarship. She worked two jobs for a while. Apparently she was trying to get some savings for college."

"And medical school," said Nick softly.

"Nick, I'm telling you, this is another killing in a series. Tammy just happened to be there. It's a coincidence that she was on the run. You know runaways always make easy targets."

"She wasn't exactly a runaway," said Nick. "She wasn't walking the streets or sleeping under bridges. When a woman gets abducted from a perfectly nice residential neighborhood like the Trevelyans', it's a personal motive."

"You don't know that. Maybe he picked her up at the bus stop."

"You didn't get anything prints from the door?"

"Well, there's a whole collection of unidentified prints and partials from the casement window, the front door, and the inside door leading to the basement steps. The boiler was wiped clean. The inside prints are the most important. One of the ones on the front door turned out to match with a delivery man, but he says he never went inside."

"What about repairmen?"

"We talked to all the utilities. They never sent anybody out there. Nobody should have been using the inside door except Tammy and the Trevelyans."

"Maybe she invited a friend over."

"That's your line, isn't it? You talked to her friends. But why would they go in the basement?"

"Yeah, well, I'll ask them again tonight."

"Hey, partner, since you're going that way anyhow, could you give me a ride home? Myra's got the car and . . . you know how it is."

"Sure thing, Schank. Just let me look over these messages." Nick flipped through the small squares of paper on his desk. Forensics said the footprint was made no earlier than Monday night. The neighbors had not noticed anyone strange near the Trevelyans' house that night. None of the clerks from the convenience store two blocks away recalled seeing Tammy at all. Angie Palmer had called and left a message saying she would like to speak to Detective Knight again.

Nick grinned to himself at the last message. Reading between the lines, he guessed that Angie had managed to bring Dave Maples around to a more forthcoming state of mind. That was a good thing, considering that Dave might be in hot water before this night's interview was over.


	5. Chapter 5

As soon as Nick started his car, Schanke flipped on the radio.

"This is Nightwatch," said the husky voice that was only too familiar to Nick. It insinuated its words into his brain as if he had never had a moment -- or a year -- away from his master's influence. It made him tense and relax at once. "We have a caller on the line."

"Nightcrawler," said a man's voice, tight with desperation. Nick never understood why desperate people turned to the Nightcrawler, since LaCroix was anything but sympathetic. Then again, he had made the same mistake himself, often enough. "The night makes me feel so empty."

"The night is empty. A black void of meaninglessness, into which our dreams fall without causing so much as a ripple," purred the Nightcrawler.

"What I mean is . . . I'm so lonely. Has anybody ever died of loneliness? Has anyone ever starved for want of love?"

The Nightcrawler chuckled and started to answer.

"Man oh man," said Schanke, twisting the dial. "I'll never understand why you listen to that creep."

Nick shrugged. "He grows on you, after a while." After a few centuries, anyway, he thought to himself.

 

"Other people just don't seem to feel it," said the voice over the headphones. "They don't get it. Love is something you need to stay alive, but people won't give it to me. They're killing me."

LaCroix licked his lips. This was precisely the sort of caller he liked to torment. "Ah, my friend," he breathed into his microphone, "you're thinking of a dream world, where you can buy love at the corner store along with your meat and your wine. But love, for those who believe in its existence, is a rare commodity. Like gold. Like diamonds. And people are always stingy with their wealth."

"But how can I make them see . . . I need them to love me!"

"The more they see your poverty, the more miserly they will become. Forget them," LaCroix urged. "Let them go and take their riches elsewhere. Remember that love is only an illusion."

"I can't!" cried the caller in panic. "I won't believe that."

LaCroix let the man whine on for a while longer, drove a few extra nails into the coffin of his hope, then signaled through the glass for a break. While the station identification was broadcasting, he got the caller's number and spoke a few compelling words to him over the phone. Such an opportunity as this only came along so often.

 

Angie opened the door of the apartment to Nick.

He smiled. "Hi. I got your message. Can I come in?" He looked around quickly. "Is Dave here? I'd like to speak to him too."

"Yeah." Angie hesitated. "I talked to him. I think I convinced him to tell you . . . see, he wasn't trying to lie or mislead you or anything. He honestly thinks it won't be any help to you."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that," said Nick softly. He glanced around the apartment while Angie went down the hall. Posters of rock groups lined the walls. One was about to fall down. The pile of books and papers had been transferred from the couch to the coffee table.

Dave appeared from the hallway, looking even more shocked and distressed than he had the night before. He was barefoot.

Nick frowned at the sight. Did he ditch them? How did he guess? But there, amid a pile of assorted shoes by the door, were the sneakers Dave had been wearing when Nick last saw him. Nick relaxed.

Angie and Dave sat very close together on the couch, and Nick took the sagging armchair. He curled his hand absently around the wooden armrest and hissed when his finger caught a splinter. He resisted the urge to bring it to his mouth.

"Angie says you have something more to tell me, Dave," he prompted.

Dave rubbed his stubble. "Yeah, I guess. It won't help -- I mean, it can't be . . . you asked about Tammy's family."

"It could be important."

"Yeah, well, I don't know anything. Really. No names, addresses, pictures, nothing. I don't even know if she had any brothers or sisters. She never mentioned them. All's I know is, she hated her father. She was scared of him."

"Did she say that to you?"

"No, but . . . when there was a movie on, or something, with a father who was bad to his kids? She would leave the room. Or if she stayed, she would make sarcastic jokes all through the show. Like to show us she wasn't really bothered. I could tell, you know?"

"Just the father. You never learned anything about her mother?"

"No. She didn't really react the same way to shows about mothers."

"Her mother was dead," said Angie positively.

"Did she tell you this?"

"Uh, no. I was just going on the same kind of thing Dave saw. She had grief reactions to shows with mothers dying in them. She didn't hate her mother -- she missed her."

"I see. But you could have told me this yesterday. Is there something more?"

"Yeah, there is," Dave admitted. "See -- I know she changed her name. I know she was trying to hide. Every once in a while there'd be a problem, like she would say she'd lost her driver's license when I knew it was in her pocket. Finally she told me it was fake."

"But she never told you her real name."

"Uh-uh. I didn't ask. She would back off real quick, you know, if you -- if you tried to get too close to her."

"But you learned something anyway?" Nick leaned forward, guessing that Dave was getting close to the point.

"I think -- I think I saw her father. Once."

"Are you sure?"

"No. She just -- we were walking down the street, with a couple bags of groceries, and she saw this man, and she just froze. She stared at him. And he stared at her. And then she dropped the groceries and took off like a rabbit. I grabbed the food and tried to follow her, find out what was wrong, but she was seriously trying to get away. Through alleys, over a fence . . . then I realized this guy was following me, so I ran off in another direction, to lead him away from her. I tried to slow down so's he'd catch up and I could get a look at him, maybe find out what was going on. But he just disappeared."

"And then?"

"Well, I went home. Tammy didn't show up for two days. I was ready to call the cops. But I knew she had this fake ID, and stuff. If he hadn't caught up to her, I didn't want to just get her in more trouble. Then she did come home, but she wouldn't talk about it. She said she'd move out if I asked her any questions. And then who would I get to cover her half of the rent? So I kept my mouth shut."

"When was this?"

"A few months ago. No, longer -- musta been October or something. The classwork hadn't gotten too bad yet."

"And where did you see this man?"

"About four blocks away. The other side of the intersection with Bloor."

"And you never saw him again."

"Not me. Not her either, I bet. She made up excuses why she couldn't go grocery shopping after that. She probably never crossed Bloor street if she could help it."

"Hmm." But he was in Toronto. He found her once. Maybe he found her again. Maybe he never stopped looking. "Is that all you have to tell me?"

"Yeah, that's it." Dave looked relieved, as if he had gotten something off his chest.

"You don't want to tell me about the visit you paid to the Trevelyan house?"

Dave looked uncomfortable. Angie frowned in puzzlement.

"Tuesday night -- it was Tuesday, right?"

Dave shook his head, swallowing. "Monday."

"Dave!" Angie protested. "You never told me about this. You said you went to a study session."

Dave hunched his shoulders. "She didn't show up for class the Wednesday before, and she was absent the whole rest of the week. I thought she must be sick, but missing three of those intensive summer classes is a serious problem. I kept trying to call her -- no answer. We knew it was the right number, she just wasn't there or wasn't answering."

"You didn't call the cops."

"I was gonna. I was scared for her. But I'd have to explain about her father -- and I didn't know anything -- and they'd find out about her fake name, and everything. So I waited a little longer. Monday, she still didn't show up. So I went over there to see."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Angie pressed him.

"I couldn't!" Dave insisted. "You would have just asked me why I didn't go to the police. I thought maybe, if she'd had an accident or something, if she couldn't reach the phone -- I could at least go see. I knocked on the door, rang the bell -- no answer. No lights."

"So you broke in to the basement."

"I didn't break in. I didn't hurt anything, or take anything. I just wanted to see if she was there."

"You looked through the basement?"

"I looked through the whole house. No accident, no sign of -- of violence. The mail had been piling up since Wednesday. And then I left."

"But you still didn't call the police."

"No. I figured -- either she'd seen him, and run away again, and she was hiding, or else he got her, and it was already too late."

"Dave!" Angie hissed. "Maybe they could have helped her."

"I didn't know!" he sobbed. "I didn't know what to do. I decided -- I decided to give her one full week. Then the Trevelyans came home, and she was -- dead. I didn't know!"

Angie hugged his shoulders, but she still looked furious.

"What time did you visit the house on Monday, Mr. Maples?" Nick asked.

"It was, uh, I don't know. Late. After ten. I just caught the last bus, coming back."

"He got back here at 11:30," Angie put in.

"Tammy was already dead by then," Nick said firmly, although the time of death was inexact; she might have lived past midnight and still left time for her body to be planted. "Even if you had called us right away, it was too late."

"Oh, God!" said Dave, crying into his hands.

Nick gave him a few minutes, with Angie comforting him, then: "Mr. Maples. I need just a bit more information. It could be helpful. Can you remember when you visited the house on Monday? Picture it in your mind. I need you to remember exactly where you went in the house."

Dave took several deep breaths. "Yeah. I think I can remember."

"Good. Now, tell me, when you went up the stairs from the basement to the first floor, was the door at the top of the stairs open or closed?"

"Closed. I kept looking for the knob on the wrong side, at first."

"So you opened it."

"Yeah."

"Did you close it behind you?"

"No. I went and looked at the rest of the house. When I left, through the basement, then I closed the door."

"You're sure the door was closed when you left the house?"

"I'm positive."

"Good. This gives us a big clue. Now, I'm going to need you to come down to the station for a few minutes, so we can get your fingerprints."

"Is he being charged?" Angie asked in alarm.

Nick hesitated. "Technically, you could be charged with illegal entry, but since nothing was missing I expect the Trevelyans won't press. But we need your fingerprints for purposes of comparison. We're trying to single out the killer's prints, and he must have touched that doorknob. And you can give us a description of this man you saw last October -- maybe enough for a sketch."

Dave ran a hand through his hair and stood up. "OK. I can do that."

"Good. I'll make sure you get a ride back from the station. And . . . bring the shoes you were wearing that night. We can get some comparison prints from those too."


	6. Chapter 6

Nick poked his head around the door to Natalie's lab. "Hi, there," he said. "Busy?"

Natalie swiveled the chair in which she was perched before a bench. "No," she said, studying his expression. "Why? You need to take advantage of my late-night removal service again?"

"Uh-huh." Nick walked into the lab.

Natalie began grabbing instruments. "How'd you manage to get shot? I didn't think any of your cases had advanced that far yet. Did you corner our serial killer?"

"Well, actually, I wasn't shot," said Nick. "I really just need a pair of tweezers." He held up his swollen finger.

Natalie blinked. "A splinter?"

"Yeah," Nick admitted sheepishly.

"Let me see that." She poked at the finger. "It's warm. You must have an almost normal blood flow to that finger -- much higher than usual for you. Does it hurt?" she asked as Nick flinched.

"A little."

"How much?"

"About as much as when you dig out a bullet, I guess."

"Really? That's incredible."

"Could you just take it out? Or give me the tweezers and I'll do it myself."

"Huh? Oh, sure." She dragged him by the finger over to a light and poised a scalpel over the wound.

"Do you really need a knife that big?" Nick asked nervously.

"I want to get the splinter out intact. Don't be a baby, you'll heal in a couple of seconds." She cut the skin open, pulled out the splinter, and carried it triumphantly away to her microscope. "This is the perfect opportunity. I've been trying to figure out how your immune system works, but it's hard to do with just blood and tissue samples. Now I can see how your body reacts to wood."

Behind her back, Nick licked the blood from his finger. "What will that tell you?"

Natalie set the microscope on its lowest power and peered through. "Well, as near as I can tell, the vampire virus completely takes over your immune system. A lot of viruses do that, but vampirism actually seems to improve immune function, instead of destroying it. Kind of like a benevolent dictatorship."

Nick made a face.

"That's why you heal so fast and never get sick, at least as long as your heart is doing its slow beat. But even the amplified immune system has its blind spots. It usually comes down to a question of misidentifying the foreign body. Now, obviously, your body responds differently to injuries caused by wood than those caused by metal, stone, or whatever. The question is, is it like an allergy, where the immune system mistakes the intruder for something much more dangerous than it really is, and overreacts, or . . . " She adjusted the focus. "Ha. I was right."

"What?" Nick's finger had stopped bleeding. He bent over Natalie's shoulder toward the microscope, ignoring the whispered pulse in her neck.

"Your body doesn't recognize the wood as an intruder. It thinks it's a part of you that's injured, and keeps trying to heal it. That prevents your body from healing neatly around the wood, like it does with a bullet or other foreign body."

"Why doesn't it realize the wood doesn't belong there?"

"I wouldn't know. Some detail of the chemical interaction, I guess. We're pretty far outside of my field already. But look at this. You've got new tissue growth all over this splinter, aligned with the grain of the wood. I bet if you leave a splinter in for any length of time, you get a real nasty fibrous scar."

"That's right," said Nick, surprised. "It can take decades to go away."

"Do you have any of those scars now?" Natalie asked with interest.

"Uh -- no. I learned to take splinters out right away."

"Oh. Too bad."

"I appreciate the concern," said Nick lightly.

"You know I didn't mean it that way."

"I know." Nick patted her shoulder. "Thanks for getting that splinter out for me."

"You should carry tweezers wherever you go, if it's that much of a problem for you."

"I'll think about it," said Nick. "For now, I gotta get back to work."

 

LaCroix left the radio station, flipping his collar up against the impending dawn. He had grown stronger with age in every conceivable way, yet he still felt the menace of this summer sun. He really must persuade Nicholas to move with the seasons.

His eyes narrowed as he saw a figure loitering at the corner. So his whispered suggestion had taken hold. A mortal who was not merely sick, not merely desperate, but suggestible as well. This had possibilities indeed.

"Good morning, my friend," he said, fixing his eyes upon the stranger's. "Do you wish to continue our talk? Why don't we find someplace more --" he glanced at the lightening east "-- private?"

The man nodded at once and turned to walk down the sidewalk with LaCroix.

The ancient vampire cast his companion a glance. "Do you know, I have the oddest impression. I believe you know what it is to take a life."

He had left the man enough will to be mildly surprised. "How can you tell?" he asked curiously.

LaCroix smiled inwardly as he led his new toy home.


	7. Chapter 7

The next day, Saturday, was Nick's night off, but he stopped by the station anyway to pick up the results of the search he had requested. Schanke, a genius for tracking down clues in a labyrinth of paper and computer files -- perhaps because his own personal filing system was so chaotic -- had obtained the missing persons records for girls matching Tammy's age who had disappeared between three and five years ago. A mountain of paper waited on Nick's desk, and he took it all home to sort out.

He started by dividing the reports into stacks based on whether the descriptions matched Tammy's height, eye color, and the level of education it would have taken her to get the scholarship for the university. He had gone nearly all the way through the stack, and the pretty-close pile was getting disturbingly high, when one report grabbed his eye.

Pamela Meriet. Disappeared August 1991 from her home in British Columbia. The right age, height, and weight. One of the best students in her school. Father: Louis Meriet, manager in a shipping company. Mother: Trudy Frasier Meriet, deceased. No siblings.

The report would have gone onto the top of the pretty-close stack, except that Nick recognized the name Meriet. Trudy Meriet had been one of the starvation victims, the freshest of the four bodies found in the woods in July, 1991. She was the one who had disappeared from her own home, less than twenty miles from where the bodies were hidden.

It was too close to be a coincidence. Tammy Parkinson had appeared in Toronto three years ago, with a hidden past that included a dead mother and a father who inexplicably terrified her. The series of starvation killings had occurred within a few miles of her childhood home, and her own murder -- after she had moved the length of the country -- was the putative sixth in that series.

Schanke had been right. It was a serial killing. But it was also personal. Tammy had found out somehow about what her father had done, about the fact that he had taken her own mother's life -- because Trudy had learned something also, perhaps -- and she had run away, changing her name and hiding from her father. But he tracked her down and killed her just as he had all those others.

Nick set the report aside with calm certainty. Now all he had to do was find out where Meriet was staying. It might not be easy, though -- the man was probably not using his own name. Nick sat back and considered how best to go about the search.

 

The phone rang.

"Yeah, Knight here."

"Nicholas. How pleasant to hear your voice. I haven't heard from you in so long."

"What do you want?"

"So suspicious!" LaCroix cooed. "In fact, I was calling to do you a service."

I don't want any help you can give me, Nick thought, but he gave the straight line anyway. "What service?"

"I had a most unusual caller at the radio station the last two nights. I think the poor fellow may be disturbed."

"So, refer him to a help program."

"Hmm, yes, I might. But you see, I had it in mind that he might have been connected with that peculiar murder that occurred last week. The girl found in the basement? Is that your case?"

"Yes," Nick admitted. LaCroix had probably checked it out before he called. "What do you know about it?"

"Only what I heard on the radio," said LaCroix innocently. "But this caller has some strange obsessions with thirst and hunger -- I have tapes of his calls, if you'd like to stop by and listen to them."

"Not tonight, thanks," Nick replied. "Do you have his name and number?"

"Just the number." LaCroix relayed it. "I do hope this helps, Nicholas. I know how important your job is to you."

NIck took a deep breath. "Thanks for the information. I'll get back to you if there's anything else we need."

"Yes. You do that." The line went dead.

Nick sat back against the couch again, thoroughly confused. He was sure LaCroix had been telling the truth, but his old master never did anything without some ulterior motive. What did he hope to gain by helping Nick find a killer?

Setting that question aside for the moment, Nick called the phone company and learned that the number belonged to one Lyle Jenkins, who lived some twenty miles from town, to the northeast. Nick's instinct was to check the man out. He might be Meriet, or he might be just an unhappy man who liked to call in to radio stations. If it was a dead end, Nick could always start a search for Meriet tomorrow. His instinct told him that Meriet would be hard to find, and it was worth following up any lead.

He checked the time: past 1:00 am. There was time for him to check out the Jenkins address and get home before sunrise -- if he left at once. Technically, Jenkins' home was out of his jurisdiction and he should get the cooperation of the local police before questioning the man. But that would take too long, and he didn't need the locals if he wasn't making an arrest. Besides, there was always the chance that he would want to do something better not witnessed by mortals.

His mind made up, Nick hurried down to his garage.

 

It was an old farmhouse, but the fields about it were unplanted in high summer. A collapsing barn housed rusting, outdated equipment, and a grain silo loomed in the back.

Nick stepped out of his car and stopped, captivated by a glance at the sky. He had been living in cities for so long that he had forgotten how beautiful the stars could be, seen from a dark place. It was centuries since he had learned their names, but there they all were in their appointed places, more eternal than any creature of flesh or blood. The Milky Way stood out against the black night like a sword cleaving the sky in two, with the Northern Cross at its hilt. From where he stood, it pointed directly at the farmhouse.

To Nick's surprise, there was a light on inside, and he could hear movement in what he guessed was the kitchen. He supposed it made sense -- if Jenkins had called in to LaCroix's show, he must be a night person. Taking the sword of stars for his omen, Nick knocked at the door.

A middle-aged man appeared, carrying the scent of garlic with him. "Yes?" he said in wary confusion, leaving the screen door closed. He probably didn't get many visitors at this hour.

"Louis Meriet?"

He didn't even blink. "No, I'm Lyle Jenkins. The name is on the mailbox. Can I help you?"

"I'm Nick Knight, Toronto Metro Police." Nick flashed his badge.

"Oh." The man seemed relieved. "Come in. I was just making myself a snack." He led the way to the kitchen.

Nick lingered in the hall doorway; the place reeked of garlic. In his best official voice, Nick explained, "We're looking for a man named Louis Meriet, and we have reason to believe he may be in this area." He recited the description he had gotten from Dave Maples the night before. A vague description, which could perfectly well fit the man in front of him.

"Well, I know several people like that," Lyle Jenkins said, "but none of them's called Meriet. Would you like some hummus?"

Nick took a pace back from the extended bowl. "No thanks. Did you call the radio station CERK last night or the night before?"

"No. Why would I do that?" The man seemed honestly confused.

"Is this your phone number?"

He glanced at the slip of paper Nick held out. "That's right. It's written on the phone there. Did somebody charge their calls to my number, or something? I hear that kind of fraud goes on a lot these days."

Nick was frustrated. He hadn't counted on being lied to. If Jenkins would just look straight at him, he could make sure that the man was telling the truth. But instead the old fellow kept puttering around the kitchen, adding more ingredients to his hummus and spreading the smell even further. The stench of garlic was giving Nick a headache. "All right, Mr. Jenkins," he said, eager to get away from the kitchen. "We just had to check it out, you understand, and make sure you know about this Louis Meriet. He could be dangerous." He paused at the door. It wasn't by the book, but -- "All right if I just have a look around, make sure everything's secure?"

"Oh, sure. Feel free. You won't find any fugitives out here." Jenkins waved a hand expansively -- a hand holding a cracker spread with hummus. Nick hurried out the door.

It only took a glance inside the old barn to be sure that it could never hold a prisoner against her will. Nick headed back to the grain silo. It looked just as dilapidated as the barn from the outside, but seemed a bit more solidly built. When he entered it he found that the inside had been renovated and converted into a cosy set of rooms. The first room he checked had the look of a carpenter's shop. The second was something like an office. The third door Nick found sent a thrill of triumph through him, for it was a heavy metal door with two solid deadbolt locks operated from the outside.

Perhaps the garlic he had inhaled had slowed Nick's mental processes slightly. As he turned the locks and pulled the door open, it occurred to him to wonder why Jenkins had freely invited him to search here, when he clearly had something to hide.

Nick heard a small click coming from the door, and a twang from across the darkened room that he hadn't heard in centuries. He leaped to one side, which was why the arrow took him on the right side of the chest rather than squarely in the center.

Nick sank to the floor, his strength flowing out in a red tide. As the red dimmed to black, he heard footsteps approaching, felt his gun and his car keys quickly removed, saw the face of Lyle Jenkins looking him over with a twisted grin.


	8. Chapter 8

Pain. Nick's chest was full of fire, as if he had swallowed the sun. His eyes snapped open, and he rolled over, looking for a shadowed spot. The pain grew worse and he froze. Sunlight shone against the far wall. The head of an arrow protruded from his chest. His once-grey shirt was now an unappealing red-brown mess.

He should have used a crossbow, Nick thought blearily. The bolt would have gone right through. Then again, perhaps this had been the intent. If he couldn't get the wooden shaft out of his chest, he would be incapacitated for a very long time. The wound wouldn't heal until the arrow was gone.

He touched the end of the shaft cautiously, then pulled his hand away with a hiss. It hurt like fire or sunlight. Nick had caught an arrow in his leg once, when he was still mortal. The pain was only a dim memory, but it had taken three men to hold him down while it was removed. This time he was alone.

I just hope it isn't barbed, he thought. He curled both hands around the shaft and gave it a sharp tug. The world went red, then black, and the silo echoed with his screams. He pulled himself back to consciousness to find that the arrow had barely shifted, and there was fresh blood on his shirt. It felt as if he had tried to rip away a part of himself. If Nat's right, that's what my body thinks I just did.

His sense of time was hazy, but the square of sunlight against the wall had moved several feet before he got the arrow out all the way. In the process, he bit several holes in his tongue, and noticed that they healed much more slowly than normal. He had lost a lot of blood; even with the wood out, he would take a long time to heal. But he pushed that thought aside, and forced himself to pull the shaft out inch by inch. Then he passed out.

 

It was nearly sunset when he awoke again, and the room was fully shadowed. Once the sun was down, perhaps he would feel a little better. He moved cautiously, finding that he was weak, but in no pain, and took stock of his surroundings.

His first, brief impression of the reconverted silo was borne out on closer inspection; it was designed to hold people against their will. Reinforced walls and door, recessed window and lights behind metal cages, heavy-duty soundproofing, something that he suspected was a camera lens peering in at the corner -- everything pointed to long, careful planning. Jenkins -- or Meriet -- had not set this up just for Nick.

There was also the information that his nose provided, which fit in with what Nat had mentioned about the messiness of dehydration. Tammy Parkinson, nee Pamela Meriet, had died here, confined and alone, knowing that her killer was the one person who ought to love her most in the world. She might not have been the only one; Nick's nose detected older traces of sickness and confinement. More than one person had been held captive here, unable to escape.

Meriet's precautions wouldn't stand up against a healthy vampire, but Nick was still weak from blood loss. He was also restrained by something around his neck -- he felt at it cautiously. It was a heavy steel collar with razor-sharp edges. He might be able to break the steel, but he would cut off his fingers -- or his head -- in the process.

There was a chain attached to the collar, the kind of heavy chain used for towing vehicles. Again, Nick might have been able to part the links -- on a good day, which this was not -- but the chain was threaded through with rosaries, which burned his hand at the briefest touch. The chain disappeared through a hole in the steel- reinforced wall and was fastened somewhere out of reach. Nick would not be escaping today. Just looking around had tired him out. The hole in his chest had stopped bleeding, but it was far from being healed yet, and he would recover only slowly if he couldn't get any blood. He would rest, regain his strength, and try again when he felt stronger.

But as he let his head drop back to the hard floor, Nick was conscious of that camera in the corner, and the man behind it. He had confused Nick with garlic, shot him with wood, and chained him with crosses. How had he known that Nick was a vampire? What was he planning to do with him? If he fell back on his favorite method, Nick wouldn't be able to go for long without blood.

If he listened carefully, Nick could just hear Meriet's heartbeat. And he was hungry enough, and angry enough, to imagine the pleasure of drinking the blood that pulsed so tantalizingly at the edge of his hearing.

 

Lord Claremont's bailiff was just settling down to a pleasant dinner in one of his lordship's studies when he heard a sound behind him. He twisted in his chair and gaped at the sight of Nick, standing by the window.

"Who are you, sir?" he cried indignantly, leaping to his feet. "You trespass!"

"I am Justice," said Nick with a feral grin. He stepped around the bailiff and glanced at the plates of food on the table. "Enjoying your dinner?"

"Leave this house at once, sir! I am Lord Claremont's steward, and I shall call for assistance if you do not leave!"

"Did you know that Lord Claremont's people are starving?" said Nick in a silken voice.

"It is not my concern if the rustics hereabouts are too dull-witted to plan for their own futures," sputtered the pudgy man. "My duty is to look after his lordship's interests."

Nick fastened his yellowing gaze upon the steward. "Do you not think a lord has a duty to his tenants?"

The steward blinked, growing muddled. "I -- yes, of course. He gives them land to work. If they can't use it wisely, they must suffer the consequences."

"And you have no part in that suffering?"

"Naturally not!"

"Wrong. You have caused that suffering, and furthered it, and even now you feed upon its fruits." Nick waved at the covered plates. "Now I think it is time that you tasted suffering for yourself." His eyes fully amber now, he stepped behind the steward and sank his teeth into the man's neck.

The rush of blood, coming upon the wave of Nick's fury, was sweetly intoxicating. He broke the bailiff's neck to be sure that the man was dead and then dropped him to the floor. Licking the last drops of blood from his fangs, Nick turned to the table and snatched up several of the fine dishes arrayed to reward the bailiff's greed. Then he disappeared into the night.

 

Natalie rolled over, grabbed the phone, and pressed it to her ear without ever consciously registering its ring. "Huh?" she mumbled. Can't be Monday already, she thought to herself.

"Natalie?"

"Unng, Schanke?" She came further awake at the worried tone in the detective's voice.

"Yeah, it's me."

"Schanke, it's --" she fumbled to bring her clock into view. "It isn't even noon yet! What's going on?"

"Nat, did you see Nick last night?"

Natalie was fully awake now. She sat up on the edge of her bed. "No, I haven't seen him since the night before. No, earlier -- Friday. The night we discussed the bodies in BC."

"He didn't call or leave a message on your machine or anything?"

"No. Schanke, what's going on? Is Nick missing?"

"Yeah, no one's seen him since night before last. He didn't come in for his shift last night, and he didn't call in sick. I can't reach him anywhere."

A thread of fear wound itself around Natalie's gut. "Maybe he just forgot to call in."

"He wouldn't forget. I think he got into some trouble."

"He can take care of himself, Schanke."

"Yeah, but -- see, the real reason I'm worried is they just found a blue-green Caddy in the lake, sans plates. They're pulling it out now."

Nat froze for a few seconds. "Give me the location and I'll meet you there."

 

The car had been pulled from the water by the time Natalie arrived, and it was leaking water in steady streams from doors, trunk, and undercarriage. There were no bodies in evidence. Curious passers-by clustered in a ring around the towing equipment. Schanke was there, peering through the windshield at the vehicle ID.

"It's his," he reported heavily. "Man oh man, is he going to be upset when he sees this."

If he ever gets to see this, Natalie thought. "No one inside?"

"Nope. Driver's window was broken."

"From the inside?" Nat bent to peer at the evidence.

Schanke shrugged. "No glass inside the car."

But if it had been broken underwater, even from the inside out, some of the glass should have been swept back with the inrushing water. Nat frowned. "Have you looked in the trunk?"

"Not yet. We're just about to. I got the spare keys here." He looked at her anxiously. "The trunk was flooded, though."

Natalie just nodded. Since vampires didn't need to breathe, they couldn't drown. She was more worried by the fact that the trunk was facing toward the sun. She hovered nervously as Schanke wrestled the trunk open, trying to plan what she would do if Nick was inside -- how she would get him to cover, how she would explain that he was still alive . . . but the trunk was empty. Natalie sighed.

She took another look at the place where the car had gone into the water. It wasn't the sort of spot where Nick would drive off the road, if, for example, he were unexpectedly caught in sunlight. "Have you looked inside, yet?" she asked. "Was there any residue, like . . . ash?"

"Ash!" Schanke exclaimed. "What are you thinking?"

"Nothing. It isn't very likely, anyway."

"Well, we haven't looked very closely inside. But there wasn't a fire or explosion or anything, if that's what you're thinking."

"Uh-huh," said Natalie absently. She pulled on some gloves and leaned closer to the car. "Can we get this door open?"

There was nothing resembling ash on the inside of the car, nor were there any shards of glass. But when Nat bent close to the inside of the driver's door, she found a few tiny splinters of glass lodged in the door handle and the bed of the lock. She straightened in satisfaction. "You'll want forensics to get a closer look at that, but I'm pretty sure the window was broken before the car went in the water. Somebody opened the door, and hit the window hard enough to send all the big fragments flying outward, but these little bits drifted straight down. That wouldn't have happened if there was water rushing all over the place. I bet there wasn't a driver in the car at all when it went in."

Schanke raised his brows. "So it's a red herring?"

"Yep. I'd guess we're supposed to spend the next few days dragging the lake bottom, and then assume that Nick drowned and floated away. "

"But then . . . whoever pushed the car into the lake must know what really happned to Nick."

Nat looked at the streaming car. "As soon as that's dry, I'd have it dusted for prints."


	9. Chapter 9

They went to Nick's loft to try to find some clue as to his whereabouts. Schanke began checking out the piles of paper lined up in front of the couch while Natalie tried to find out if there was anything missing.

"Everything's normal, as far as I can tell," Nat said. "The earliest message on his machine is from you on Saturday, so he must have gone out the night before."

"And never came back," Schanke finished grimly.

"Find anything there?"

"I think so, but I'm not sure what. These are the missing persons reports I tracked down for Nick on Friday. He went through them and separated them into piles, then when he was almost done, he stopped at this report." He showed it to Natalie. "It's a good match for Tammy Parkinson, but no better than some of the others. And it's from way the heck across the continent."

"Meriet," Natalie mused. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Does it? I was trying to remember where I heard it too."

"British Columbia. Of course! Meriet was the name of one of the starvation victims found in the woods out there."

"Whoa! Wait a minute. You're saying there's a connection here? The same killer takes out a mother and daughter years apart in different parts of the country?"

"I think so." Nat bounced the paper in her hands. "Nick was right; it was a personal motive. He must have chased her all that way, for three years."

They looked at each other. "Her father?" Schanke whispered, dsibelievingly.

"Nick said it: always look close to home," Natalie pointed out.

"Man oh man. So he was on the right track after all."

"But it's still the same crazy who starved those poor people to death." Natalie frowned. "And that was the lead Nick was pursuing when he disappeared."

"Hold on there. That doesn't make any sense. If Nick was gonna try to find this Meriet guy, he would've gone to the station and started the search from there. He didn't. So he couldn't have been following up on this report. It didn't have anything to do with him disappearing."

"I don't know, Schanke . . ."

"All right, look. Worst case scenario. It's on our minds, let's say it: what if this sicko has Nick?"

"Yeah," Nat whispered. "That's what I was thinking."

"Well, if he sticks to form, we still got a few days to work with. Enough time for me to track down this Meriet guy, now that we know who we're looking for."

Natalie shook her head. "We might not have a few days, Schanke. Not all of the murders took that long."

"The only one that was faster was that diabetic guy, and then only because he was sick. Nick doesn't have any health problems like that, does he? Does he?"

Natalie had turned as pale as Nick. "No," she breathed. "Of course not." She pulled herself together. "OK, Schanke, you start following up on this Meriet guy. I'll go talk to some of Nick's friends and see if any of them have other ideas."

"You gonna ask Janet?"

"Uh, yeah."

Schanke whistled. "Man oh man, she is hot."

"I know. And so does she." Natalie shook her head. "I just hope she can give me some good news."

 

Nick had now had a full day to watch the way the sunlight crept across the room. It was very cleverly set up; the windows faced southeast, and let the light in from dawn until late in the afternoon. If it had been winter, the slanting rays of noon would have reached across the room to burn Nick, but the high summer sun instead slowly circumscribed the area that Nick's chain could reach. It was very intimidating. If Nick had been a few centuries younger, he would have been gibbering in terror. He wondered whether that effect was calculated or concidental; just how much did Meriet know about vampires?

Nick had concluded that he wouldn't be able to escape on his own. He was weak from the energy he had expended in healing, and the blood hunger raged inside him as if he were a first-year fledgling. He had tried his strength against the collar and chain and merely ended up with more burns and cuts to heal.

His best hope now was to wait until Meriet came to check on him. He knew the man was watching him through that camera in the corner, waiting for the moment of death. But it could be very difficult to tell whether a vampire was dead yet, especially in a slow matter like blood starvation -- the body might never collapse into dust as it would if the vampire were killed by any of the usual methods. If Nick stopped moving, Meriet would eventually come in to get a closer look. Then Nick could grab his tormentor and force him to release the collar.

So Nick settled himself in the corner least accessible to the sun and tried to stay calm, husband his strength and win the waiting game. It wasn't easy when his teeth itched and his eyes burned and his throat yearned for blood.

 

"He has been missing for how long, you say?" Janette demanded.

"Two days. He was last seen at the station Saturday evening. Now it's Monday night."

"It is early Monday night," Janette corrected, with a speaking gesture at her nearly empty club. "He could easily have been caught away from home by the early sunrise, and found somewhere else to go to ground." She took a sip from her wine glass.

"Then why didn't he come home last night?" Natalie asked. "No, something's wrong. I just -- feel it."

Janette raised her eyebrows with vampiric hauteur. "I feel nothing," she said. "I would know if Nicolas were in trouble."

"That's right, you have some kind of connection to him, don't you? Can you reach him through it?"

Janette's look turned inward for a moment. "Not . . . just at the present. Perhaps he has gone somewhere out of town."

"If he were out of town, would you know if he were in trouble?"

Janette answered that with a worried frown.

"Somebody dumped his car into the lake," Natalie persisted. "And I don't think that was a friend of his. How did they get the car keys? Where was Nick while this was going on? Janette, Nick has to be in some kind of trouble."

"He is not dead," said Janette. "That, I would know, even if he were on the other side of the world."

Nat sighed with relief. "Good. That's a start. Now we just have to make sure it stays that way." She frowned. "How . . . accurate is this connection between you? Could you use it to find him?"

"Oui, if I can only reach his mind first. If he is too far away, or deeply asleep --" Janette shrugged.

"Damn!" Natalie muttered. "Well, how close do you have to be? He couldn't have gone far -- if he had, why would his car end up back in Toronto?"

"I can try to search for him," Janette said slowly. "It will take time, and the nights are very short." She swirled her drink thoughtfully. "Where was his car found?"

"On the lakeshore, to the southwest of town. We can start the search there."

"We?" Janette repeated. "I hunt alone, Dr. Lambert."

Nat felt her cheeks heat. "I can help you out," she said. "Two can be more efficient than one --"

"Not when one is a vampire, and the second is mortal. I will search for Nicolas alone."

Natalie bit her lip, with frustration, but she was impressed that Janette was willing to stir from her club -- better not to do anything to discourage her. "You'll tell me, if you find him?"

"If I find him, Dr. Lambert, Nicolas will tell you himself."

"Yes, well, just -- let me know how things are going, will you? I'll call you if the police get any closer to tracking him down." Nat hesitated. "I know you don't like to answer questions, but this is important. Can vampires starve to death?"

Janette's face revealed nothing but interest in the question. "We are not sure," she said at last, turning her head away. "It is very difficult to starve a vampire by force. The hungrier we get, the more dangerous we are." She sipped her drink. "There are tales of vampires trapped in crypts for years. In the stories, they go into some sort of suspended state, until a source of blood comes near. Then they awaken and kill. But by that time, they are . . . quite mad."

Natalie shivered. She had been fearing for Nick's life, but now she had to worry about his sanity -- and his determination not to kill.

Janette gave Natalie a direct look. "No mortal will be able to starve Nicolas, I assure you. It would take a very long time -- far longer than I will take to find him."

Nat tried to be reassured about this, but there was a note of menace in Janette's voice that alarmed her. What if she encouraged Nick to take vengeance? "Please," she began, and was appalled at how weak her voice sounded. "Let me know whatever you find out, OK?"

Janette nodded and turned to pour herself another drink.

 

Night passed, and a new day began.

Nick dreamed of blood, and twitched in his sleep, and his watcher knew that he still lived.

Schanke arrived at the station early and stayed late, waiting until the close of business on the west coast, swearing softly as his search turned up one negative result after another.

Doris Trevelyan suggested to her husband over dinner that they move out of Toronto.

Natalie called in sick again, and sat in her car outside of the Raven, waiting.

Dave Maples had dreams of a menacing man watching him from across the street.

Janette, who the previous night had quartered the area to the south and west within easy driving distance of the city, turned her car to the northwest, then to the north. She pushed the search until near dawn, and had to take to the air to reach home again, though she disliked flying.

Natalie at last caught up with Janette's car, only to find it abandoned in the pale, gathering light. She looked around the horizon in despair. "Nick, where are you?"

Night passed, and another day began.


	10. Chapter 10

Natalie stopped by the station in the afternoon to see how the search was coming along.

"Whoa," said Schanke. "Doesn't all that luggage weigh you down?"

"What?"

"Those bags under your eyes."

Nat brushed at her face. "Thanks a lot, Schanke. You look great yourself. Did you give up on the minoxidil?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Have you found anything?"

"Nada. This guy Meriet could have been airlifted by little green men, for all the trail he left behind. If Nick was really looking for the guy, I can't believe he found him in less than one night."

"Maybe he had some information you don't," Natalie suggested.

"Excuse me?" A tall youth hovered uncertainly at the edge of their conversational space. "Uh, I need to leave a message for Detective Knight. They said his desk was over here?"

"Right here," said Schanke with a wave. "He won't be getting your message anytime soon, though."

"He won't? Where is he?"

"Don't I wish I knew," Schanke groaned.

"Detective Knight is missing," Nat informed the young man's confusion.

He looked frightened. "Missing? It, uh, doesn't have anything to do with the case he was working on, does it?"

"We're not sure," Schanke told him, eying his reaction. "It could. Why, do you know something about the case?"

"I -- yeah, I'm Dave Maples. Tammy Parkinson's roommate. Detective Knight brought me in here the other night to look at photos and try to make a composite of a guy I saw, but I couldn't remember much. More came back to me last night, so I came in again and talked to the sketch artist. I thought Detective Knight would want to see this." He waved a copy of the sketch.

"Let me see it," said Schanke. "You say this guy has a connection to Tammy's murder?"

"Yeah, it's -- I'm pretty sure it's her father."

Schanke's eyes widened, and he exchanged a glance with Natalie.

"Does it help?" she asked him quickly.

Schanke studied the sketch. "Well, it's pretty nondescript, but -- it could be the break we're looking for."

"Then . . . you do think he's the one that killed Tammy? And now he's got Detective Knight?" Dave Maples turned several shades paler.

Before they could answer, Captain Cohen's voice rang out. "Schanke. My office."

Schanke excused himself with a lift of his eyebrows, taking the sketch with him.

"Are you all right?" Natalie asked Dave, who was beginning to look slightly green.

"Yes. No! This is all my fault!"

"Here, sit down. How is it your fault?"

"I should have called the police when Tammy went missing. I just didn't know what to do. I knew she wouldn't want them involved, but -- maybe, if I had called, she'd still be alive. And so would Detective Knight!"

"Hang on," said Nat. "Nick's just missing, not dead. And even if you had called in a missing person report on Tammy, they probably couldn't have found her in time."

"That's what Detective Knight said. But look what happened to him!"

"Well, he was right about that, even if he is crazy enough to get himself into trouble sometimes. Look, you've just given us our first break in the case, by coming in to make that sketch. If anything can help us find Nick, that's it."

Dave looked up at her, his eyes red. "It really is my fault, you know," he insisted. "I never do anything right."

"You did something right today," Natalie assured him. "Come on now, let's see if we can get you a ride home."

 

"Schanke," said the Captain, "what progress are you making on finding Knight?"

"Not a whole lot, Captain," he admitted. "The Caddy was clean. The only fingerprints were Nick's and mine. The records on Louis Meriet lead up to two and a half years ago, when he dropped off the face of the earth."

"The department's resources are at your disposal for this search, Schanke."

"Yeah, I got a couple of uniforms looking for witnesses who saw the Caddy go into the water, and some more trying to find the place where the window got broken." He shook his head. "Do you know how many parking lots with broken glass there are in this city? We really don't have a lot to go on."

"Well, I just had a reporter call me asking about Knight, and wondering if his disappearance was related to the case he was working on. I managed to put him off, but if he made the connection, so will others. If the media realize we have a possible serial killer suspected of abducting a police officer, it'll be a circus."

Schanke frowned. "Getting the cooperation of the media might not be such a bad idea, Captain. We just got a sketch of the suspect." He outlined the chain of logic connecting Dave's sketch to Louis Meriet to Nick's disappearance.

Captain Cohen looked over the sketch. "If we give this out to the media," she said slowly, "a man with a common-looking face like this, we'll get more calls than we can follow up on. We'll go from almost no leads to hundreds of false ones." She pursed her lips. "I'll consider it, Schanke. I we don't get any new information on Meriet's whereabouts -- or if the reporters start getting close to the truth anyway -- then I'll go to the public for help. But first let's try out all the bona fide leads that we have."

 

Nick heard the locks on the door pulling back, and his muscles stiffened in anticipation. But the footsteps came only a few paces beyond the threshold of the door.

"I know you're not dead, Detective," said Meriet's voice. "Talk to me."

Nick opened his eyes and turned his head. Seeing that Meriet stood in a patch of sunlight beyond the reach of his chain, he made no other move. He wanted to play up his weakness, though it was not much of an exaggeration at the moment. A whiff of garlic made him gag; Meriet must have bathed in it. And he was wearing at least two crosses around his neck.

"How do you feel, Detective?" Meriet brought a bottle from behind his back and uncorked it. "Are you hungry?" He let a splash fall from the bottle to the floor, and the sweet scent of blood -- human blood -- competed with the garlic.

Without conscious volition, Nick found himself at the end of the chain, straining towards the bottle until the collar gouged deep into his neck.

"Now you know how I feel," said Meriet.

Nick made himself step back and ease the chain. With a will developed over centuries, he forced the beast down inside of him. "What do you want?" he demanded, his voice still a toothy growl.

"I want . . . your respect, Detective. I want friendship, companionship . . . love."

Nick's vision was returning to normal now, and he studied Meriet's face in bewilderment. "I don't understand," he said.

"If I gave you this bottle now, and released you, would you forgive me? Would you let me live my life in peace? Would you be my friend?"

As crazy as the man was, Nick doubted that he would believe a lie, so he admitted, "I can't do that. You're a killer."

Meriet's face twisted. "I wouldn't have killed those people if they hadn't been doing the same thing to me. Don't you see? I had to show them what it was like to be so deprived. But even then they wouldn't believe me. They refused to give me what I need. Even Pamela . . . even Pam!"

"You killed her mother. You tracked her down and kidnapped her. And she was supposed to forgive you?"

"It wasn't like that. Her mother -- Trudy didn't understand either." Meriet waved the bottle expressively. "I tried to show them how I felt, how much I was suffering, but they just turned away from me and died. They betrayed me."

"Tammy -- Pamela never reported you to the police. That doesn't sound like betrayal to me." Nick had to keep the man talking just a little bit longer.

"She couldn't go to the police. She had no evidence. But she ran from me. She wouldn't give me what I needed, so I had to come explain it to her. She was just like her mother. Just like all the others. They wouldn't believe me." He took a step forward, pleading. "You believe me, don't you? Vampires understand about hunger, about need."

Nick's teeth were aching again. "I'm a police officer. Do you know the penalty for abducting and restraining an officer of the law?"

"No, no!" Meriet cried, stamping his foot. "You're looking at it all wrong! Don't you see --"

Nick lunged forward and wrapped one hand around the bottle, the other around Meriet's wrist. But the chain brought him up short and he fell to the floor with the bottle beneath him. It smashed, and the shards of glass drove into his chest. Meriet pulled free and scrambled out the door, throwing the locks and screaming imprecations that Nick's mind refused to interpret.

He was reduced to licking the blood up from the floor, pulling the pieces of glass out of his shirt and sucking each one clean.


	11. Chapter 11

Nick returned to the little thatched hovel and ducked inside, passing the mother and infant that he had laid out in the first room.

"Children?" he said softly, wiping at his mouth to be sure no trace of blood remained. "I brought you some food."

He set the silver dishes down by their pallets and lifted the covers away. The girl sat up at once and began tearing into the roasted guinea fowl. Nick had expected the boy to need help to eat, but the child found the strength to carry handfuls of pudding to his mouth.

Nick sat back on his heels a moment, watching their enjoyment of the food with appreciation. Then he turned back to the other task that he meant to complete before sunrise: the burial of the mother and baby. He carried the bodies on blankets out to the back of the house. With his vampiric strength, he soon had a hole deep enough, but before he laid the bodies in, his keen ears picked up sounds of distress from within the house. He ran inside.

All four of the plates he had brought had been licked clean, but now the food was spread in half-chewed form over the pallets and the floor. The girl was on her hands and knees, retching desperately. The boy was convulsing, growing weaker by the second.

Nick knelt helplessly next to the boy, unsure what was wrong, having no idea how to help them. Then he heard an unpleasantly familiar chuckle behind him.

"I'm disappointed in you, Nicholas," said LaCroix from the doorway. "You claim such regret for your lost mortality, but after only a few centuries you've quite forgotten what it's like, haven't you? After months of starvation, their puny bodies can no longer handle food, but they're too hungry to realize it. They're quite doomed." He stretched out a toe to stir the still body of the boy, who had stopped breathing. "The greatest danger in famine lies in the plenty that follows. You do yourself the same disservice by denying yourself the pleasure of the kill."

 

As he recalled LaCroix's words of a century and a half ago, Nick couldn't help considering how they applied to his current situation. He had not known such hunger since he was a very young vampire. If he were given blood now, would his body be able to handle it? Or, perhaps more importantly, if he were tempted with blood now -- living blood -- would his will be strong enough to reject it?

 

Natalie checked through her purse to make sure she had everything. The small pistol she had bought after her encounter with Roger Jamison, a few crosses, first aid equipment for vampires -- which was equivalent to surgical equipment for anyone else -- it was all there. She went to her refrigerator for the bottle of blood she had liberated from Nick's kitchen.

A few minutes later she was sitting in her car watching the Raven, her purse next to her and the blood wedged down between the seats. She picked up her cell phone and dialed without looking.

"Homicide division, Schanke here," said the familiar voice.

"Hi, it's me. Did you get anything more?"

"Sorta. There was one important break, but it doesn't really help us find him. The police in Meriet's hometown got his fingerprints for comparison when his wife first disappeared. The bozos never put them in the database, which is why I didn't get a match. But they finally sent me copies of the prints, and they're a match for the unknowns in the Trevelyan house."

"So it's definite. It really was Meriet who killed her."

"Well, I'd still like more evidence to win a trial, but yeah, I'm convinced."

"Does that mean he has Nick?"

"It makes it more likely."

"But you still don't know where Meriet is."

"Nope. I'm sorry, Nat, I've tried every channel I can think of --"

"I know, Schanke. It's all right." Natalie stiffened as Janette appeared in the alley. "I gotta go now."

"Nat, where are you? You've taken off every day this week."

"I'm looking for Nick, the best way I know how."

"You should leave that to us. Do you have some lead you haven't told me about?"

"Sorry, Schanke, can't talk now. Gotta go." Natalie closed the phone on Schanke's protests and tossed it onto the opposite seat while she started her car. Time for another night of following Janette on a tour of the surrounding countryside. They had circumnavigated the city completely over the last few nights, covering all the towns within a distance of forty miles. From what Janette had told her, this must mean that Nick was either farther away, or he had been asleep when they passed near him.

She didn't know what Janette was planning to do tonight, but she was getting fairly confident that Nick's old friend would never notice another car following her. It puzzled her, that a being with a millenium of experience at hunting and being hunted would not realize someone was tailing her. But Janette's instincts had been developed in another time; perhaps she expected to be able to hear any hunter approaching her -- that didn't apply too well when they were in cars. Or perhaps Janette knew, and simply didn't care that Nat was back there. Natalie didn't really care either way, so long as she was on hand when Janette found Nick. Janette would encourage Nick to take vengeance and slake his thirst with a kill. Nat intended to prevent that.

She had the radio on to keep her awake, although she refused to listen to Nightwatch. At midnight the station she was listening to took a break for a news update, and that was how Natalie learned that Nick's disappearance had become media fodder.

"Toronto police are continuing their manhunt for Louis Meriet, believed to be instrumental in the disappearance of Metro Police Detective Nicholas Knight, last seen on Saturday. Meriet was a suspect in a murder case Knight was working on, and may have hoped to hide his guilt by disposing of the homicide detective."

Natalie turned the radio off.

 

"Welcome to Nightwatch. Speak to me."

"I don't wish to be on the air. I must talk with you."

"My dear child, I am on the air. If you wish to speak to me, you must be as well. Come, entertain our gentle listeners."

A pause, then, in torrential, colloquial, medieval French: "You must help me find Nicolas. Do you know where he is?"

Long silence.

"He is in danger!"

"Gentle listeners, it appears my caller is too modest to speak publicly. Here's a musical selection to keep your ears awake while we speak privately." Music: a new release from the Smithereens.

"What do you know about what has happened to Nicolas?"

"He is in no danger."

A breath. "You did start this! You sent him into a trap!"

"A trap he can easily escape, Janette, if he only recalls his true nature."

"Tell me where to find him."

"I don't see that that would suit my purposes."

"Does it not suit your purpose that he should be indebted to me? That he should be . . . grateful?"

A long pause. "Perhaps. It is not what I had in mind."

"Nicolas will know that you arranged it. He will never forgive you if you drive him to kill again."

"Nicholas will never forgive me for any number of things. I fail to see what appeal forgiveness should hold for me."

"LaCroix, you know I wish him to return also, but force will only make him resist more! Let me rescue him, soothe him, lead his suspicions away from you -- he will come back to us the sooner for it."

"You may be right. Very well, I shall give you a hint -- just to make it sporting. To find Nicholas, you must be properly oriented."

Barely a moment's thought. "Eastward, then. How far? LaCroix, how far?"

"Enjoy the hunt, my dear. The music is ending; I mustn't neglect my audience. Do call again sometime."


	12. Chapter 12

Natalie wasn't sure what Janette had been doing in the bar she stopped at, but now she was driving like a demon, and Nat was hard pressed to keep up. Either Janette had seen her tail, and was trying to lose it, or she had some idea of where Nick might be. Nat was determined to stay with her either way. She pushed her accelerator to the floor, whispering encouragement to her small car.

They tore halfway around the city on the highways, then got off on a major feeder road heading east past Scarborough. Natalie winced as they passed a speed trap at over 130 kph, but apparently the cop in the car was dozing, for there was no sign of pursuit. At this point Janette's driving pattern changed again. She would get off at an exit, follow a road for some distance, then turn back to the same place and take a different exit. At first Natalie thought it was another attempt to lose her, but then she realized Janette was following some sort of signal or sensation, but she wasn't sure how best to reach it. She would have to hurry, because it was beginning to get light.

Janette stopped by the side of the road, while Natalie waited some distance away with her lights dimmed. She guessed that Janette was studying a map, for the interior lights were on in her car. Then the vampire started driving again, with more confidence.

Natalie's heart began to soar with anticipation, but she forced herself to wait until she knew where Janette was going. They turned off onto increasingly small roads, then finally came to a long, stony farm drive. Natalie stopped her car at the foot of the drive while Janette drove up. When the other car parked and its lights went out, Nat picked up her phone to call the police.

The phone was dead. Natalie cursed unbelievingly. How could they be in a no-signal zone this close to the city? Then she remembered that she had been using her phone a lot the past few days, and she hadn't recharged the battery. She should have gotten a proper car phone, that would recharge while the engine was running. She set the phone aside, wondering what to do now. She had planned to let Janette rescue Nick, then she would give Nick the blood she had brought and make sure he didn't kill anyone. The police would arrive too late to see Nick at his worst, but in time to catch Meriet.

That plan was ruined by the dead phone and the nearness of dawn. Natalie still had all the equipment she had brought with her, and she was still determined to keep Nick from killing. But if Janette didn't find Nick soon, they might have to wait another day to get him free. And if Meriet was going to be caught by the police and brought to justice, it would have to be Nick that caught him -- after he had drunk down every drop of the blood Natalie had brought.

Her mind made up, Nat grabbed her purse and the bottle and stepped out of the car. The sky was nearly as light as day; birds were in full song. Natalie heard nothing else. She walked down the driveway.

She passed Janette's car and reached the house to find it still and dark. While Natalie hesitated, she heard a rattling from the direction of the grain silo. She hurried in that direction.

Janette was trying her strength agains a door to the silo, but apparently it was very heavily reinforced. The handle ripped away under vampiric strength, but the door stayed closed. While Nat watched, Janette gave up and started to circle around the silo, looking for another entrance.

Natalie frowned as a faint smell came to her nose, but before she could look for the source, an arm slipped around her neck from behind. Whoever possessed the arm was prepared to deal with vampires; he might have bathed in garlic. Natalie squirmed against his hold, jabbed her elbow into his stomach, and dove a hand into her purse. But the man had his breath back by the time she came up with the gun; he twisted it out of her hand and held it against her head.

"You just stay very still now and be a good girl," he growled into her ear, "and maybe I'll let you see your friend."

Janette had been alerted by the struggle and was standing just a few feet away. Natalie hadn't seen her move, and neither, apparently, had her captor, for she felt the man's start.

"You! Stay right there. Don't move."

Janette's eyes were faintly yellow. "Why not?" she purred, moving slowly to one side.

"I'll kill your friend here if you don't back away!" The gun pressed harder against Natalie's temple.

"Why should I care what happens to a mere mortal?" Janette asked.

"You care, or you would have attacked me already," said the man. "But if you get too close you'll find me pretty uncomfortable." He moved slightly, and Natalie could hear clinking sounds. The hand that held the gun to her head sported a charm bracelet with dozens of crosses. That was probably why Janette hadn't moved in immediately.

"Janette, get out of here," Natalie said firmly. "Call the police. I'll take care of Nick."

"You may find Nicolas rather difficult to deal with," Janette said smoothly, but her eyes flicked repeatedly towards the east.

"You can't do anything now, the sun's about to come up," Nat urged. "Get to a phone."

"I doubt she'll even get that far," said the man behind Natalie. He gestured upward with the gun. A red glow was already lighting the top of the grain silo.

It was too much for Janette. Her eyes were yellow with rage and fear. She snarled and leaped forward, knocking the man away from Natalie, but she pulled back with a hiss as soon as she had touched him. The man held a cross out toward her, his hands shaking but his eyes alight with triumph. "Run away, little vampire," he said. "Enjoy the sunshine."

Janette's gaze flicked from the cross to the silo to the burning eastern sky. Then she disappeared, too fast for the mortal eye to follow.

Natalie had been eyeing her gun, which had fallen between the man's feet. As he stared around in confusion, looking for Janette, Natalie dived for the gun.

The man blocked her rush, grabbed the gun first and held it pointed at her face. Nat froze. She realized that this man looked just like the sketch Dave Maples had helped to make.

"Come on," said Louis Meriet. "Time for you to join your friend."


	13. Chapter 13

Janette had twisted the heavy door lock so badly that it couldn't be opened. Meriet handcuffed Natalie's arms around a tree while he took the door off its hinges. Nat watched the proceedings philosophicallly. She had no desire to run away; she wanted to see Nick and reassure herself that he was still alive. But, as she recalled Janette's warning, she feared it might be an unpleasant experience.

Meriet had taken her purse, her gun, and the bottle of blood she had brought. If Nick was starved past the point of reason, she would have nothing to use to bring him to his senses. She could only trust in his unwillingness to kill.

She wondered how far Janette had gotten. She had heard the car start up and race away, spitting gravel. She supposed driving made more sense than flying, although it was slower; the car would be lower down in the long dawn shadows, and it could provide protection once the sun was too high to avoid. Janette had had nearly a millenium of experience at avoiding the sun, and could doubtless take care of herself -- but had she gotten far enough away that Meriet wouldn't find her? Had she reached a phone?

At last Meriet had dismantled the door to the silo. He uncuffed Natalie from the tree and led her inside. A second heavily reinforced door responded to two keys, and Meriet shoved Natalie roughly inside. She stumbled as the door slammed behind her, and she tried to get her bearings.

The sun was shining directly into her eyes, so she couldn't see anything at first. She backed into the shadows in the direction of the door and nearly screamed when she caught sight of the room's other occupant.

It was Nick, looking more pale, gaunt and tattered than she had ever seen him except at their first encounter, when he had nearly been shredded by a bomb. At least now his clothes were mostly intact, but they were covered with appalling amounts of blood. This was bad enough, but what was truly unnerving was that Nick seemed to have no awareness of who Natalie was. He was staring at her with yellow eyes, as unblinking as a hawk's, and his fangs were at the ready.

"N-Nick?" Natalie said uncertainly.

He didn't move, only stared. He was nothing but a vampire now, a beast, a hunter. And she was nothing to him but a walking sack of blood.

Natalie was very glad she had stepped back from the sunshine, rather than forward. But she realized after a moment that it was not the light that was holding Nick back; he was close enough to the sunbeam to be uncomfortable as it was. He was straining against a thick chain attached to a collar. There was blood around his neck, and one hand held the collar to ease the strain. Deep cuts scored his fingers.

"Nick," she breathed. "What has he done to you?"

Natalie began to circle the room carefully, looking around with a coroner's eyes. Nick followed in his orbit at the end of the chain, and she was careful to stay out of his reach. His movements were so swift and smooth that she realized how much he had to restrain himself to seem human in everyday life.

There were bloodstains all over the floor, but in her professional opinion some of them were too old to be Nick's. Tammy Parkinson had died here, and at least one older murder was indicated by the stains in one corner. Glass crunched underfoot; she wasn't sure where it came from, but she thought some of the holes in his shirt might have been made by glass. At last she found the cause of the largest hole. The arrow was within Nick's domain, and she didn't dare examine it closely, but even from three meters away Nat could see the striated flesh clinging to the shaft. That arrow had been inside him for a long time, and it had left a big hole when it came out. With six days' starvation on top of that, it was no wonder that Nick was beyond reason.

She returned to her station on the far side of the sunbeam and sat down to think. Nick reoriented himself in that direction so fluidly the chain didn't even clink. The constant pressure on that chain, the weight of Nick's intent gaze, and the slow trickle of blood from his neck made Natalie want to scream. Instead, she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate.

Clearly, he needed blood. This was not a time to insist on her blood-keeps-you-from-coming-back-across theory. He could not heal such injuries as he had sustained without blood, and it wouldn't do him much good to become mortal again if he was mortally wounded beforehand. And even human blood was better than none. It would set back Natalie's experiments on vampire metabolism, but those were already ruined beyond repair. The most important thing was for Nick to get out of this alive and sane -- after that they could worry about their special project.

Natalie had at hand a very convenient source of modest quantities of blood -- herself -- but that still left the tricky problem of how to give the blood to Nick without letting him take more than she could spare. If she extended her hand to him, he would just pull her in and take her by the neck.

The instruments in her purse would have been very useful at this point, but Meriet had taken it away. Natalie began reluctantly to pick through the shards of glass on the floor until she found one that was suitably needle-like. She considered it distastefully. As a doctor, she wasn't at all squeamish about the idea of giving blood, but it gave her shivers of dread to think of doing it with such a septic instrument. Still, for Nick, she was willing to risk an infection. It was, at least, an effective way to get a limited amount of blood out of her body. But how was she to get it to Nick's side of the room? The room offered her no resources except dust, bloodstains, and pieces of glass. That left what she had brought with her.

At least her hands had been cuffed in front of her, instead of behind; that gave her a chance. With a sigh, Nat began to rip off one of the sleeves of her shirt. It wasn't as if she had ever really liked this shirt, anyway. The cotton was thin enough to seem breezy in the summer weather, but very difficult to tear with her hands bound awkwardly together. Natalie found herself glancing enviously at Nick's fangs. At last, with the help of another sharp piece of glass, she obtained a fistful of ragged cloth. In the process, she scratched herself enough to make her concerns about unsterilized instruments thoroughly superfluous. With each scratch, Nick's eyes had fastened more intently on her arm.

Turning her back to those watchful eyes, Natalie went through the familiar process of locating a vein and bringing it up. Opening it proved rather more messy and painful than with a proper needle, but she persevered and soon had a nice trickle of blood from a suitably small hole in her arm. Trying not to mess up the rest of her clothes too much, Nat kept the blood flowing until her torn sleeve was thoroughly reddened. Barely a quarter of a liter, she estimated, and far short of what Nick needed, but perhaps it would help. She clamped the vein shut with her free hand and turned back to Nick.

The scent of blood had transformed him. His eyes were red now, his face a snarling mask, and he had released his hold on the collar to grasp for her with both hands. Deeply ashamed to have any part in this degradation of a rational being, Natalie tossed the blood-soaked cloth to her friend.

He snatched it from the air with a movement too swift to see, and retreated to a corner to suck at it. Natalie stared at the floor and fought back tears of grief and rage. She vowed to see Meriet pay for this -- for what he had done to Nick and all his other victims.

Nick raised his head from the cloth, his eyes seeking her. "Natalie?" he whispered. His eyes were still golden, and his fangs distorted the word, but he had said her name.

"Oh, Nick," said Natalie miserably.

"Nat, what did he do to you?" Nick demanded, coming to the end of his chain again. "You're bleeding." The bloody cloth hung forgotten from his fingers.

"Meriet didn't do that, I did," Nat said. "You need blood."

Nick's eyes darkened to their normal color, and he looked appalled. "You shouldn't have done that, Nat."

"You need it!" Nat cried. "Finish it."

Nick looked at the cloth in his hand. "I don't want your blood," he said slowly, but without much conviction.

"Take it. I gave it to you to help you. Whatever keeps you sane, Nick --" She bit off her words before she could offer too much.

"I am very hungry," he admitted, lifting the cloth to his mouth. Then he lowered it. "How did you get here? How did Meriet find you?"

"He didn't. I found him. I was following Janette. She figured out you were here, but she didn't have time to get you out before sunrise. Meriet caught me looking around."

"Janette?" said Nick, as if he were having trouble following the conversation. Gold glinted in his eyes.

"Yes. If we're lucky, she got to a phone, and the police should be here any minute now."

Nick's gaze became distant. "No," he murmured. "She didn't make it to a phone. She's in the trunk of her car, and she's very angry."

"Well, she'll call the police as soon as the sun sets. By tonight you'll be out of here, Nick."

Nick's head jerked. "He's watching us, Nat," he whispered. "Maybe listening too."

"Well, tough. He can't move you before tonight. Twelve more hours, Nick, and then you'll be free."

"Twelve hours," he repeated. "Yes. I can wait that long." Then he turned his back to her suddenly, and she knew he was sucking desperately at the cloth again.


	14. Chapter 14

Captain Cohen paused on her way out of the squadroom. Detective Schanke was hunched over one of the computers in the corner, his fingers tapping the keys frenetically. About half the characters he typed were backspaces.

"You're in early," Cohen commented. It was just after six in the morning, and past time for her to be leaving, but there were a few hours to go until the start of Schanke's shift.

Schanke didn't respond to her words, but kept glaring at the screen as if he might extract the information he wanted just by staring hard enough.

Cohen laid a hand on his shoulder. "Come to think of it, how late did you stay here last night?"

Schanke gave a start. "Oh, hi, Captain."

"What time did you leave last night, Schanke?" Cohen repeated.

"I don't know. A little after midnight, I guess." As new information came up on the screen, Schanke began typing again.

"Try three thirty," said another detective, passing by on his way out the door. "And he's been here nearly an hour already."

"I thought of something I might have missed, earlier," Schanke said. "So I got up and came back in."

"Schanke," said the Captain in a low voice, "you're not going to do Knight any good like this. Get some rest. You'll think more clearly then."

Schanke slammed his hands down on the keyboard, sending a garble of characters to the computer. "I can't!" he protested. "Nick's been missing for six days, now. We don't have any longer to find him. Do you know how many times he's saved my skin, Captain? I gotta be there for him, this time."

"Do you have any leads at all?" Cohen asked.

"No. Well, Natalie's missing."

"Dr. Lambert? The coroner?"

"Yeah. She's been looking for Nick all week, and now I can't find her. I think she may have stumbled into something, but she wouldn't tell me what she was doing."

"I saw her last night," volunteered the same man who had broken into their conversation earlier.

"Shouldn't you be on your way home, Callahan?" Cohen demanded irritably.

"No, wait, Captain, this could be important," said Schanke. "Where'd you see her, Callahan? What time?"

"About nine last night, just after my shift started. She was sitting in her car outside that club, the one Knight's always going to -- The Rook?"

"The Raven," Schanke breathed. "She said she was gonna ask Janet about Nick disappearing."

"I thought you already questioned all of Knight's acquaintances," Cohen said.

"We did," said Schanke. "Nobody had any suggestions. But then why was Natalie at the Raven last night, when she said she was looking for Nick? Did you see her go inside, Callahan?"

"No, she was just staring at the door. It looked like she was staking the place out."

Schanke snapped his fingers. "She musta thought Janet, or somebody else at the Raven, knew something and wasn't telling her." He reached for a phone. "I gotta check on Janet."

Callahan drifted out the door and Cohen lingered interestedly as Schanke placed his call.

"Hi there, who's this? Miklos? Well, Mike, this is Detective Schanke of the Metro Police. I'm in charge of the search for Nick Knight, and I gotta ask your boss-lady some questions . . . Not in? What time did she leave? . . . Since last night, huh? Any idea where she was going? . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . Every night this week? That's interesting." He raised his eyebrows at Cohen. "And she's not back yet? Is that unusual? . . . I see. Well, we'll keep an eye out for her. If she shows up, ask her to give me a call. She has my number." Schanke hung up. "Whew. Talk about weird. Janet's been out all night, every night this week -- just like Natalie. And she didn't come home this morning, just like Natalie."

"You think Dr. Lambert was with her?"

"Yeah, could be. But if Janet knows something about Nick, or Natalie thinks she does, why not just tell me? Why all the secrecy?"

Cohen frowned. "Have you put out an APB on them yet?"

"On Natalie, yeah. I'll add Janet to it -- and her car, just in case." He returned to the computer to get the information on Janette's car, cursing as he tried several different ways to spell her name. When the answer finally came up, he gave a low whistle. "Will ya look at that? Janet was clocked last night at 140 kph. The officer didn't even try to pursue, just wrote down her license. She'll get a ticket in the mail in a coupla days."

"Was she alone?"

"It doesn't say . . . no, wait! 'Followed by a small grey late-model Ford, license number unknown.' That sounds like Natalie. Man oh man oh man! What did they think they were doing? Here, see, they were heading east. I'll make sure all the police stations in that direction get special notice of the APB."

"Fine. Good work, Schanke. And after you get the word out, you go home and get some rest. Have the dispatcher call you as soon as anything comes in. We probably won't hear anything for a few hours, at least."

"Sure thing, Captain," said Schanke airily. "As soon as I get this last search request sent in."

Cohen shook her head and departed for her own rest.

 

Nick settled himself on the far side of the room, eyes closed and head tilted back against the wall. Natalie approached for a closer look at the collar and chain that restrained him.

Nick's eyes snapped open. "Stay back, Natalie," he croaked. "Don't come near me."

"I was just going to --"

"Stay back."

Natalie retreated, but kept trying to persuade him. "If I get rid of those crosses for you, do you think you could get free?"

Nick shook his head. "I'm not strong enough now. Just stay out of my way, OK?"

"All right. Whatever you say." Natalie sat down on her own portion of the glass-strewn floor and considered the lines of weariness on his face. She couldn't guess how much will it was taking him to stay coherent in her presence, but he kept his eyes shut and his mouth closed most of the time.

Natalie's nerves, worked up to a high pitch of anxiety over the past week, wouldn't let her stay quiet. "How did you end up here?" she asked at last. "How did you know where to find Meriet?"

"I had a tip," Nick murmured. "I got a phone call . . ."

"Who from? Nick? Was it anonymous?"

Nick didn't answer.

 

Nick froze in dismay, staring at his master. He had thought himself almost free, this time, but LaCroix had been no more than half a day behind him. Would he never escape?

LaCroix bent down beside the little girl, who was curled into a ball, groaning with pain. "So young," he said softly, touching her lank hair. He pulled the girl up to a sitting position and made her meet his eyes. Her whimpering stopped and she gazed blankly at him. "So young, to know such suffering. Shall I put her out of her misery, Nicholas?"

Nick leaped to his feet. "No, don't --"

But LaCroix's teeth were already flashing. After only a few seconds, he let the child's limp body fall from his grasp. "Thin blood," he muttered, licking his lips. "And not much of it -- but starvation lends a certain purity, don't you think?" He glanced at the dead boy. "Oh, excuse me, I thought you had fed already."

Goaded beyond endurance, Nick snarled and snatched at his master's throat. But LaCroix caught his hands and bore them down easily, laughing. "Nicholas, you mustn't allow yourself to be distressed by the deaths of mere mortals. It's a natural and inevitable process for them."

"Leave this place," Nick growled. "Get out!"

"What, would you cast me out, with the sun already rising? I think not, Nicholas. Let us sit here and have a cozy chat, father to son. Where are you heading? What plans do you have for the future? Perhaps I can help you out."

So Nick was condemned to spend the day in a tiny hovel with LaCroix and two children whose deaths, by one method or another, he had helped to bring about.

 

"Natalie?"

"Yes, Nick?"

"That vampire vaccine . . . "

"What about it?"

"Maybe you should look into it more. If you can't find a cure for me, at least you would be safe."

Natalie squinted at him, trying to guess what he really meant to say. "Safe? Nick, I trust you."

Nick shook his head; that wasn't what he'd been getting at. "Never mind."

 

Schanke was dozing at his desk over a pile of transcripts when someone shook his shoulder.

"Hmmmng?"

It was Terry, the dispatcher. "How long have you been here, Schanke?"

"I don't know. What time is it?" Schanke looked at his watch. "Holy schamoly! It's nearly eight in the evening? Myra's gonna kill me."

"Schanke -- we got a call back on your APB."

"What? Which one?"

"Both of them. The two cars were found less than a mile apart. Some back road out past Scarborough. The local police are waiting for further instructions."

Schanke peered at the slip of paper that held the address. "Wait a second!" he said, digging through the transcripts on his desk. "I've seen that address before. Here it is! One of the calls we got last night, after the news -- some newspaper kid thinks he saw the guy from the sketch there!"

"Well, we've got definite sightings of both the cars you were looking for. What do you want to do about it?"

Schanke rubbed his face. "Call the captain. Tell the locals to stay back until we get there with a hostage negotiation team. I want all officers assigned to this case to meet me there. This is it, I just got that feeling!"


	15. Chapter 15

Natalie started upright. She couldn't believe she had fallen asleep while she and Nick were being held prisoners in this silo of horrors, but the past week of searching and worrying had taken its toll on her. She looked around anxiously. The sun was no longer shining through the windows, but the scraps of sky she could see were still well lit.

"What time is it?" she asked. "Nick? Has the sun set?"

"Not yet," he said quietly. He kept his eyes closed, and his voice was very rough. But a moment later he turned his head alertly. "Someone's coming," he said. "Cars -- lots of them." He climbed to his feet.

Hasty footsteps approached the door, and one key, then a second rattled in the locks. Natalie stood up, uncertain whether to retreat to Nick's protection or stay out of his reach.

Meriet pushed into the room and grabbed Nat by the arm. He was holding a gun -- hers, she realized. "The police are here," he said accusingly. "You told them!" He brandished the gun in her face.

Nat could only stare at him speechlessly.

"Let her go," said Nick in a low growl.

"Come on. I need a hostage. You're going to get me out of here."

"Take your hands off her!" Nick spat.

"Nick!" Natalie protested. He sounded so possessive -- as if Meriet were stealing his dinner.

"You!" said Meriet, waving the gun at Nick. "You cause any trouble, and I'll make sure all your cop friends know just what you are. Oh, yes -- you all think I'm crazy, don't you? Well, I'm not stupid. I know how to get what I want. And you, my girl, are going to help me get it." He released Natalie's arm and grabbed a fistful of her hair instead, jerking her head down.

Nat staggered, spreading her feet for a better purchase on the dusty, gritty floor. "Let go!" she yelled. She lifted her cuffed hands to the roots of her own hair, below Meriet's grip, and pulled back. Meriet lost his balance and flailed his free arm. Nat saw the gun pass her field of vision and grabbed for it. She spun around, towing Meriet in an arc while they wrestled for the gun --

Then Meriet was lifted up and out of her reach, and Nick, his eyes flaming, sank his teeth deep into the man's neck. The garlic and the crosses were no stay to a hunger and hatred so powerful.

Nat found herself holding the gun and gaping. She dropped it. "Nick!" she cried. "Stop it! Nick!" She ran forward and grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away from Meriet by main force.

Nick dropped Meriet to the floor and turned on her. His eyes still glowed, and his hands gripped her shoulders punishingly.

"Ouch! Nick, you're hurting me!" She saw him bare his fangs and lean toward her, and without thought she slapped him hard across the face. He pulled back for a moment. "Let me go, Nick!" she yelled at him. Then her eyes fell on Meriet lying still and crumpled on the floor. "Oh, God. You killed him." She lifted her hands to her mouth, hardly noticing that Nick had released her.

When she looked at him again, his eyes were blue and stricken with horror. He staggered backwards and fell to his knees, staring at Meriet's body. "Not again," he whispered. "Oh, no, not again." His face sank into his hands.

Natalie stood frozen there, between the dead and the undead, for how long she was never sure. Then she turned her back on Nick and knelt beside Meriet, checking his pulse to be sure there was no hope. She noted that the deep punctures in his neck had bled only a little after Nick dropped him; he must have been drained dry.

Like an automaton, without really considering her actions, she ran her hands through Meriet's pockets until she found his keys. The key to her handcuffs was easily recognizable, but it seemed to take her forever to get them unlocked, her hands were shaking so badly. Then she turned, reluctantly, to Nick.

He was hunched in a ball on the floor. She didn't speak to him. Nothing she could say would have helped -- nothing that was true, anyway. She tried several keys in the lock at the back of his collar until she found the right one. She tossed the collar to the floor, noting that the cuts on his neck were mostly healed.

Then she stood again, looking around, wondering what to do next. She could hear noises from outside. A moment later an amplified voice came booming through the silo: "Louis Meriet, this is the police. You're suspected of abduction and murder. Come out to us quietly, unarmed, and you won't be hurt." Dimly, Nat recognized Schanke's voice through the distortion.

"We should go out to them," she said in a small voice. Then she looked around the room. "Oh, God, we can't let them see all this." They would have to be idiots not to piece together the evidene scattered all around the room. Natalie rubbed at her face, looking about with a coroner's eye. She bent down and picked up the bloody scrap of sleeve from the floor. Then she began untangling the rosaries from the heavy chain, cursing as her hands fumbled the links repeatedly.

Do I really want to do this? she wondered to herself. Why am I doing this? She got no answer from Nick's motionless form, but she kept moving, as if something inside of her had already made the decision. She stuffed the rosaries into Meriet's pockets, looked around again and saw the gory arrow. She picked it up, broke it into several pieces across her knee, then wrapped it in the bloody rag.

"Here," she said, holding the pieces out to Nick. "Put these in your pocket. I'll try to get you out of here quickly." Why am I doing this? This is tampering with evidence. This is obstruction of justice. This is protecting a killer! I could lose my job. Lastly she turned and stared at the body, with the incriminating puncture wounds in its neck. She retrieved the gun from where she had dropped it on the floor.

"Nick. Nick, get up. I need your help. Stand his body up. Stand right here, behind him. I have to get the angle right."

Nick obeyed without protest. She doubted that he really knew what was happening, on any conscious level. His face was haggard, hollow, and haunted. She pushed aside all thought of sympathy for him; he wasn't the one who had died. He wasn't the one who was doing all the work to conceal his precious secret. She took a deep breath, stepped close to Meriet's suspended figure, and took careful aim with the gun held between her body and his. She found that she could force her hands to be still if she thought of it as an operation. She had one cut to make, and it had to be perfect. She pulled the trigger.

Dead flesh flew from Meriet's neck. Droplets of blood spattered Nick face. Startled, he dropped the body and stepped back.

Natalie contemplated the bullet wound, the powder burn, and the obliterated tooth marks. She turned her head to see where the bullet had gone. She made one last inventory of the room, then took Nick by the elbow.

"Come on," she said, her voice cold and dead. "Wipe your face and let's go outside."

In the office-like room, she found her purse and the bottle she had brought with her, along with an old heavy coat. She draped the coat over Nick's shoulders, trying to conceal some of the gore on his shirt, and put the bottle in its pocket. Nick showed no reaction to any of this.

When they appeared in the broken doorway of the silo, there were dozens of guns and nearly as many cameras trained on them. Natalie looked around at all the people, feeling as bewildered as Nick. Then Schanke came running forward.

"Natalie, are you OK? Man oh man, what happened to Nick?"

"He's in shock," said Natalie. "He'll be all right." She pushed Nick toward Schanke, eager to get him off her hands. Then it occurred to her that he might still be hungry, and unsafe around mortals.

"Geeze, look at his shirt!"

"It's not his blood. Most of it, anyhow."

"What happened to Meriet?"

"He's dead," said Nat flatly.

"The gunshot we heard?"

"He was going to use me as a hostage. We were wrestling for the gun -- and then --" Her throat closed on the lie.

"Man oh man oh man. It wasn't your fault, Natalie. Remember that. It could have been you that got shot. The bastard deserved it anyway, after what he did to Nick. Are you sure he'll be OK?"

"I think so." Nat looked around, at the cluster of cameras and microphones outstretched to catch her every word and gesture. Janette lingered on the fringe of the crowd; she must have emerged from her car just as soon as the sun set, while Nat was making herself an accessory to Nick's crime.

At Natalie's wave, Janette came forward. "I'm glad you are safe, Dr. Lambert," she said quietly. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you earlier."

"You can help us now. Take Nick home, and keep an eye on him."

"Shouldn't he go to a hospital?" Schanke objected.

"All he needs is plenty of rest and -- fluids," Natalie said. "And he needs to get away from these news crews. Janette will take care of him."

Janette led Nick away through the crowd, murmuring encouragement in his ear. Police and reporters alike backed away respectfully, but the cameras kept whirring. Natalie shivered.

Schanke stared disbelievingly after Janette. "You're just gonna let her walk away with him? What is the deal with you and her, anyway?" said Schanke. "You were following her, right, when you said you were looking for Nick? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wasn't sure if Janette could find him. She's -- kind of psychic. She has a special connection to Nick."

"Man oh man." Schanke shook his head. "That's tough."

"It's not always reliable though, so I didn't think there was any point wasting police power on following her. I just kept an eye on her myself."

"That could've gotten you into a lot of trouble, Natalie."

"Yeah." Nat glanced back at the uniforms swarming over the silo, examining the body within. "Yeah, it could have."


	16. Chapter 16

LaCroix watched the late news attentively, frowning at the image of Nicholas being meekly led away from the cameras, pale and stunned. His phone rang.

"Yes?"

"Damn you, LaCroix. Damn you to hell!"

"Nicholas! How nice to hear from you, my son. I'm so relieved to know that you've recovered from your ordeal."

"You set this up! You sent me into a trap!"

"What on earth are you talking about, Nicholas?"

"That phone call the other night. You knew Meriet was the killer. You warned him I was coming. And you told him everything he needed to fight me!"

"That would be breaking the Code, Nicholas. Give me at least a little credit."

"You planned for me to kill him. You knew I would!"

Ah, so Nicholas had succumbed to his hunger at last. LaCroix's lips curved. "Naturally, the man had to die," he said reasonably. "For what he had done to you and what he knew about us, he could not be allowed to live. It is long past time for you to accept your nature, Nicholas. Such broken creatures as that are our just prey."

Nick's breathing was ragged over the phone. "Just -- stay away from me! I never want to see you again. If I do, so help me, I'll kill you a second time. And as many times as it takes to see the job done!"

"Nicholas, Nicholas. How can you say such things? You need me, my son, and I am here to help you."

"I never needed you!"

"You need me now. Tell me, are you quite sure this Meriet fellow is dead?"

Long silence.

"Have you not begun to learn yet from your mistakes? Such people as that can be very dangerous if they are brought across by accident. But have no fear. I shall take care of this. You find out where the body is being kept -- would it be at your little friend's morgue? How is she, by the way? I saw her on television. She seemed quite distraught."

"Leave her alone!"

"Certainly, my dear. You find out where the body is, and I shall meet you there. Together we can make sure that he stays dead. Oh, and Nicholas, if things grow difficult for you -- if the police and news media find too much evidence of your nature -- I should be delighted to help you relocate."

"Stay away from me! I can take care of myself!"

LaCroix held the phone away from his ear as the receiver banged down at the other end. He chuckled to himself in satisfaction. Now that he had killed again, Nicholas would come around soon enough.

 

The next night, Nick stopped by the squadroom after sunset, where he was made much of.

"Nick!" cried Schanke. "How you doing, partner?"

"Better," said Nick with a thin smile. He nodded as one of the detectives greeted him.

"You look better. Been drinking plenty of fluids?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I bet. Especially with that liquid diet you've been on. I guess that's why you held out for so long, huh -- you're used to getting by on hardly any food."

"Yeah." Nick smiled at another well-wisher. "Uh, Schanke, about this whole thing -- I'd prefer not to talk about it, if you know what I mean."

"Sure. I understand. Sure. Whatever you say, pal. So long as you come out alive, what's to worry about, huh?"

Nick grimaced in agreement and acknowledged another greeting.

"Listen, your car's supposed to be out of the shop tomorrow. They said the damage wasn't too bad, since it was in the water less than a day. Some parts they had to replace. I don't know how big the bill's going to be, but since I know that car is your baby, I told them to go ahead."

"Fine. Thanks for taking care of it, Schanke."

"Hey, how about that Janet, huh?"

"What?"

"Well, Natalie told me her secret."

"She did?"

"Yeah. You and her got some kinda psychic link, right? That's how she found you."

"Oh, that." Nick shrugged uneasily. "Well, you found me just as quickly, Schank."

A crowd was forming around them. Everyone in the building, it seemed, came to slap him on the back and say how glad they were that he was back safely. Nick nodded and conjured up smiles for them, and heaved a sigh of relief when the Captain chased them all away and called him into her office.

She regarded him keenly. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. I'm back on my feet now, ready to get back to work."

"Not so fast. I want you to take at least two more days off, first. You need to be fully recovered. Have you seen a doctor?"

"Uh -- yeah."

"Mm-hmm. I'm putting Schanke back on night shift, so you won't be working alone when you come back. He says you won't talk about what happened."

"I'd . . . rather not."

"Fine, that's your prerogative. If you change your mind, we've got professionals you can talk to, with complete confidentiality."

"Thanks, Captain, but -- no thanks."

"Fine. Now." She sat back in her chair. "I'm very glad that you came out of this with no permanent injuries."

"Yeah, me too."

"And you did good work, tracking down Meriet so quickly."

"Uh, thanks, Captain."

She leaned forward. "But did it ever occur to you to share the news with the rest of us? Hmm? Since when do you go chasing an anonymous tip outside of our jurisdiction, without even contacting the dispatcher?"

"Well, it was my night off, Captain. I hadn't signed in with the dispatcher."

"Then you shouldn't have been pursuing suspects! Knight, since you came here you've broken the rules again and again. You always get good results, so you think you can get away with it indefinitely. But those rules are there for a reason, and now you've had a chance to see why." She treated him to her sour glare. "If concern for your own safety doesn't move you, what about your partner's? What about the reputation of this department? How do you think we look when the top news story is that one of our detectives is missing and we have no idea what happened to him?"

"I'm sorry, Captain."

"You'd better be. From now on, do it by the book, all right?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Now, go talk to Schanke. Let him know you're OK. And remember to thank him for finding you!"

Nick nodded and moved to the door, but there he hesitated. "Captain --"

"Yes?"

"I've been thinking . . . maybe I should get a transfer." Actually, he'd been thinking of leaving this life and identity entirely, but perhaps he could hold on to some of the good he had begun to do here.

Cohen frowned. "Where?"

"Oh, I don't know. Away from Toronto."

"Is it just because of this latest incident?"

"No, not really. I just -- have a lot I need to get away from."

She glared at him. "Take your two days off. Then come back to work for one full week. If you still want a transfer then, send me the forms. I'll consider it."

"Thanks, Captain."


	17. Chapter 17

Later, Schanke perched on one of Natalie's lab benches, kicking the metal cabinets with his heels as if he were a child. "I mean, this guy was a real nut, Natalie. A fruitcake. He was just dripping with crosses and rosaries and religious medals. Like he thought they would protect him from something."

"Oh, really?" Natalie murmured without surprise. She pretended to be interested in the slide under her microscope.

"Yeah. And did you know he videotaped the whole thing?"

Nat looked up in alarm. "He did?"

"Yep. That's how we found out about this other victim. It must have been a couple of months ago. Looks like she was a hooker. He picked her up, took her to his place, and videotaped her until she died of thirst."

"Do you know who she was?"

Schanke shook his head. "We're checking through the missing persons reports. What do you want to bet, when we find her, I'm gonna have to be the one to tell her family and friends?"

"No bet, Schanke. It's a tough life."

"Sure is."

"But did he videotape Nick, too?"

"No, that's the weird thing. He had everything set up, the tape in the camera and everything, but it was a tape he'd already used -- it was wound to the end. And he never put a new one in. It was like he just forgot, or something."

"That's strange," Nat said, relieved. She bent to her microscope again.

"Totally out of this world, that's what that guy was. I mean, cloud cuckoo-land!"

"So did you find the extra body?"

"Nope. We probably won't, either, if he hid it the way he did those ones in BC. A few years down the line some hiker will find a skeleton in the woods, and that'll be the end of that. Oh, and we figured out how Tammy -- uh, Pamela -- learned the truth about her old man. Looks like she found some of his videotapes -- including one of her mother. Her prints were on some of the casings along with his."

"Ugh, that's awful," Natalie said. "No wonder she ran."

"Yeah. I wish she'd told the cops about it, though. It could've saved a lot of grief. Maybe she felt like she couldn't rat on her old man." He shook his head. "Some gratitude that got her."

Morris Panachek, another coroner whose work often overlapped with Natalie's, came into the lab.

"Sorry, Schank," said Natalie. "Duty calls."

"Well, nice talking to you anyway, Natalie. I'll tell Nick to drop by and say hi."

Nat stiffened. "Sure. You do that," she said in a constricted voice.

Schanke frowned and threw her several worried looks on his way out the door.

"So, Morris, what did you bring me?" Natalie asked with false heartiness.

"I finished the Meriet autopsy," said Panachek.

Natalie sat on her desk, jamming her hands under her thighs to hide her nervousness. "And?"

"You didn't kill him, Natalie."

Nat could feel the blood draining out of her face. "How --" She swallowed. "How do you know?"

Panacheck shook his head. "I'm surprised you didn't see it yourself. He hardly bled at all, even though the bullet sliced right across his carotid."

"I guess I was too shaken up to think straight," she excused herself. "So, uh, what did kill him?"

"A stroke."

"What?"

"Cranial aneurism. One of the biggest blood vessels in the brain. He must have died instantly. His heart probably stopped pumping just a second before you shot him."

"But I -- but he --"

"His blood pressure must have been way up. Struggling with you was just more than the wall of that artery could take. His days were numbered anyway."

"Wait, but -- you said he didn't bleed?"

"Not from the neck, because his heart had already stopped."

"So he didn't lose much blood?"

"What?" Panachek looked confused. "Well, I wasn't exactly counting, but a fair number of liters went down the drain when I opened the body."

Natalie took a deep breath. "A stroke. Are you sure of this, Morris?"

"Positive. You can come see his brain yourself." He snapped his fingers. "Oh, that's another weird thing. Somebody broke into the morgue last night and defaced the body."

"What?"

"They cut off his head. They didn't seem to be trying to conceal evidence, or anything. Damned if I know why they did it. Sometimes a killer like this just attracts other crazies out of the woodwork, I guess."

"Who did it?"

"Don't know. No fingerprints, no witnesses. Three people working the night shift at that morgue, and none of them saw or heard a thing."

Natalie was beginning to guess who might have done it, and why. "Yeah," she said slowly. "That's weird, Morris."

"You want to come look at that brain?"

"Huh? No, I trust you, Morris. Thanks for bringing me the news."

He grinned. "I thought that might make you feel better. Everybody said you were real upset about killing the guy. But you didn't."

"Yeah, well, uh, thanks." As if she were in a trance, Natalie picked up the phone to call Nick. Then she thought better of it and stood up. "I'm going to be out for a little while, Grace," she told her assistant. "Take my calls, OK?"

 

Nick sat at his piano, letting his fingers flow over the keys. The music didn't express what he was feeling; no piano could sound the depths of his despair and self-loathing. He played simply because it was something to do, and he didn't care how lifeless and wooden the music sounded.

The phone rang. Nick ignored it. Playing the piano wasn't making him feeilng any better, but neither would talking on the phone. He let his machine answer it.

"Nick? You there?" came Schanke's voice, rendered tinny by the machine. "Hey, pick up. I gotta talk to you. It's about Natalie."

Nick slammed the piano closed and crossed the room to the phone. "Yeah, what?"

"Hey, buddy, you should talk to Natalie. She's really upset."

"Talking to me wouldn't make her feel any better."

"I think she's real torn up about killing Meriet. You were there. You can tell her it wasn't her fault."

"She knows it wasn't her fault."

"C'mon, what is the matter with you, Nick? You know what happens the first time a cop kills someone -- and Natalie wasn't even prepared for it! We've been through this before, so we gotta help her out."

Nick couldn't even remember with any clarity the first time he had killed a man. It had been in battle, he supposed, when he was a mortal. "That's not what Natalie's upset about, Schanke."

"Well, if you know so much about what she's feeling, you should know just what to say to make her feel better! C'mon, have a heart."

"Nothing I can say would make her feel better. She doesn't want to see me for a while." Nick turned as he heard his elevator starting to rise. "Schank, someone's here, I have to go."

"Nick, no, wait --"

Nick hung up and went to stand before the elevator door. He couldn't think who would be coming here now. It wasn't Janette; he would have sensed her. He should also be able to sense LaCroix, but the older vampire sometimes had an uncanny way of concealing his presence. Nick felt fury boil within him as he considered facing LaCroix again, but when the elevator came to a stop he could hear a mortal heartbeat within.

It was Natalie. Her face was pale, and dark smudges stood out beneath her eyes, but she looked less strained than when he had last seen her.

"Natalie," Nick breathed, stepping back so as not to crowd her. "I wasn't expecting you."

"Yeah, well, I just found out something important. Nick, you didn't kill Meriet!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you didn't kill him! He died of a cerebral hemorrhage -- a stroke, Nick. Even if you hadn't grabbed him, he would have been dead in a few seconds anyway. His blood pressure was driven up by the struggle. No way he would have lived through a confrontation with the police."

"But I --" Nick brushed unconsciously at his mouth. "I did attack him."

"Yes, but you couldn't have taken more than a liter of blood from the body. The post mortem showed no unusual blood loss."

It was true that Meriet's blood had hardly taken the edge from Nick's hunger. But he could remember so clearly the sensation of that pulse ceasing beneath his hands, the taste of the blood that sprang forth and then slowed . . . disturbed, Nick turned away and walked toward his couch. "I didn't kill him?"

"No! It was an accident. The man was fatally ill."

"But -- if he hadn't died just then, I would have killed him. I would have sucked him dry."

"But you didn't, Nick."

"But I would have." Nick frowned at her. "It makes a difference to you?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

Natalie considered, then said earnestly: "Partly because of my part in it. If you didn't kill him, then I wasn't concealing a crime by helping you. If he died by accident, I'm not an accessory to murder."

"Yes. I see. But that doesn't change what I did."

"Yes, it does! Nick, you only took a liter of blood from him. You didn't kill him by being a vampire."

"I'm still responsible for his death, even if I scared him to death rather than draining his blood. And I still intended to kill him."

"Look, Nick, if you had killed him another way, if you had shot him, how would you feel about it then?"

Nick hardly had to think about that one; it had happened often enough since he became a cop. "I would be sorry I had taken a life, but I would feel justified."

"Right. You were defending yourself and me. And anyway, the man was a serial killer."

"Natalie, I'm a serial killer. And I just added a new victim to my list. It's a lot longer than Meriet's list." Nick cut himself off before he said any more. He had never revealed the darker parts of his history to Natalie.

Nat threw her hands up. "So what are you going to do? Give up? Go back to killing for food and pleasure?"

"I could always walk into the sunlight. Then I wouldn't have to worry about this anymore."

Natalie stared at him in horror. "No! Nick, you have to face this. It's a part of dealing with addiction. Sometimes you fall off the wagon. But you have to get back on again. And again. However many times it happens. As long as you keep trying, you haven't failed."

"That's very nice, Natalie. You sound just like Monica Howard." He sneered. "But when I 'fall off the wagon,' it costs a human life."

"In this case, a life that was spent anyway. We just found out you didn't fall off all the way, Nick. Now get back on and start facing life."

"It's not that easy." Nick walked away again, needing some space between them. He didn't want to admit these things to Natalie, but she had to know the truth. "I liked it, Nat. It tasted good. It made me feel good." His fists clenched. "I hate that, but there it is."

"Of course it made you feel good. That's the way your body is designed. It's the nature of the addiction. You've got to accept that."

"Now you sound like LaCroix." The name was a curse in Nick's mouth.

"No! I'm not saying you should give in to your nature, let it control you -- I'm saying you'll never control it until you accept it for what it is!"

Defeated, despairing, Nick wrapped his arms around himself. "Does this mean you're not going to be able to find a cure?"

"Oh, Nick." Natalie went to him and put her arm around his shoulder. "I don't know, but I'll keep trying if you will."

Nick swallowed. "Of course I'll keep trying. I never lose hope. That's why LaCroix won't let me go."

One scarlet tear traced a path down his face.

 

"You shouldn't have done it, LaCroix. It will only turn him away from us again."

"Hmm. I admit, I hoped it would go differently."

"It was dangerous as well. How could you tell that madman about us?"

"I fed him misinformation on a few critical points. And I planted a few traps in his mind to be certain he would keep no records -- and to ensure that, in the end, he would step within Nicholas's grasp."

"It didn't work. He's furious with you."

"I know. Nicholas does persist in turning his anger in the wrong direction. If only he would let me aim that passion for him, as I used to! But never fear, Janette. Next time, I shall think of a better way."

 

March 1994


End file.
